


The Thing In The Mirror

by bluebeholder



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Fish, M/M, Memoirs, POV First Person, Sharing a Bed, cosmic horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-07 16:13:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 30,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12236283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebeholder/pseuds/bluebeholder
Summary: The year is 1927; the month, October. Credence Barebone, rescued Obscurial, works at MACUSA so that he can be kept under watch. When a strange artifact makes its way into MACUSA's hands, he is sent with Director Percival Graves to Innsmouth, Massachusetts, to discover the origins of the artifact.The secrets they uncover are far more dangerous than anyone expected.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Français available: [La Créature Dans Le Miroir](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13410006) by [glittertrashcan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/glittertrashcan/pseuds/glittertrashcan), [toomanyvinereferences](https://archiveofourown.org/users/toomanyvinereferences/pseuds/toomanyvinereferences)



> **HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!!!!!!**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> This is the first of my fics for the Gradence Trick-or-Treat prompt fest. My prompter was anonymous, and requested the following: _A newly-rescued Credence is employed at the MACUSA as a consultant - due to his still strong connection with dark powers and his new ability to perceive black magic interferences. On Halloween, he’s sent with a recovering Percival to investigate strange occurrences in a small, suitably creepy town. While there, the boys face fears and feelings._
> 
> Anon, I hope you enjoy this!!! As per my usual, this fic got _incredibly long_ and _incredibly out of hand_. There are nine chapters to this thing, and I'll be posting throughout the month. 
> 
> I do recommend that at some point this month you read H.P. Lovecraft's "[The Shadow over Innsmouth](http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/soi.aspx)", which will give you some of the other bits of backstory which weren't relevant for this particular fic. Worth a read, and should take you less time than this--because it's actually shorter than the fic I wrote. Awkward. 
> 
> Additionally, a final note. Although as usual I did WAY too much research, _there will be no footnotes in this fic_. None. Zero. Not one of them. Lovecraft didn't include any, so neither will I. Even though a part of my soul is absolutely dead from this.
> 
> Without further ado, I present: _The Thing In The Mirror_!

It is only under the greatest duress that I defy the ban on speech related to the incidents in the fishing town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts in late October, 1927. I believe that it is time at last for magical society to understand the terrible truth behind our power, the reason behind our very existence. The struggle to uncover ever greater secrets of magic risks more than the world knows, and though it may have terrible consequences for me, I must speak out now.

To uninquiring souls, this occurrence has passed by as only a grace note in the cacophony of the No-Maj government and its striving to abolish the evils of liquor. Of course there have been other accounts, of the incidents of July 1927 and what followed from the No-Maj government in the winter of 1927-1928; but the grim horrors to which I bore witness in October were another facet of the horrific truth evident behind the curtain of shadows that lie over Innsmouth.

At the time, I was a young man of only twenty years old. I remain famous for my status as an eldritch thing even in magical society, but at the time my notoriety was at an all-time height. I was only newly acquainted with the circles of New York, and even then only through my friends the Goldstein sisters. I had few other acquaintances and no other friends, for very few people would be seen to speak with me even under dire circumstances. I was a self-admitted hermit, preferring any other company than that of my fellow men. In my small apartment I had a cat, a small black creature with eyes that glowed in candle-light, and this was company enough for me.

After the terrible events at the end of 1926, I was recovered from a hole under a building on the northern end of Manhattan Island as merely a small heap of shadows and torn-up magic. Though I was put back together, I could not very well go out on my own again. For a while, in order to restrain my singularly unpredictable and dangerous nature, I was kept in a drugged stupor by the doctors. My dreams were strange and nebulous, filled with visions of weird things and terrible histories. Later I learned from certain books, forbidden to all those who do not swear to the study of the deepest mysteries of magic, a possible name of the landscape I wandered in my dreams. Kadath, the abandoned city, unknown to all but dreamers of the strangest and most horrid sort; but then again, that may have been only the terror of memories which haunt me still.

And names, whispered again and again in my ears, as in adulation. I write it now with trepidation and only because I have sworn myself to absolute honesty in this narrative. Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, the Dweller in Darkness…strange names, true; and found in the literature only in connexion to Dark witches. Rumours still abound of unhallowed rituals performed by Gormlaith Gaunt; haunting stories whisper between the learned of Antioch Peverell’s alien writings; and the weird heterodoxies of others put fear into hearts under the pale solstice moon—but I will not speak of them here.

When I was finally released to the custody of the Goldstein sisters, I found myself in a world I had previously not dared to imagine. My grim existence was ennobled amid the cavalcade of marvels and splendors that even now transport me with delight. Does any witch know how truly exceptional it is to speak the words “Wingardium Leviosa” and see a teacup arise into the air? I suppose that at least one does, for I am a witch, and I have the privilege of witnessing such miraculous events.

For the first time in my life, I took up a wand. I was tutored, mentored, and brought into the light at long last, and only when the first blush of joy faded did I realize that I was also under constant guard. I was not free of my cursed shadow—and I never will be—so could never truly be a part of the world I so dearly craved.

I was given a job at the Woolworth Building, as a filing clerk. My early days at the job were filled with a mundane kind of terror, the kind that only leaves a man light-headed and breathless, with spots dancing before the eyes. I never before experienced work without punishment, and with every error I expected to be whipped or worse. But I grew used to this new kindly treatment, and so it continued. I made timid overtures of friendship to a kind girl who worked at the next desk, and before long it was a custom of ours to take lunch together. We never spoke of matters of real substance, but it was quite enough for me; and, when her sweetheart at last proposed to her all of a sudden on an unremarkable Tuesday morning, I believe that I was the first person she told.

Only one obstacle remained, it seemed, to my perfect happiness: the funereal figure of the man who haunted me in the witching hour. Percival Graves was returned at last to the apotheotic halls of MACUSA, despite the hand tremor which rumour had it prevented his casting any great magic and the limp which left him permanently in need of a cane. His piercing dark eyes would fix upon me the moment he entered any room in which I was, and I quickly came into the habit of departing swiftly the moment that I heard he was on the way.

In those days he always seemed to be “on the way”; the Director of Magical Security must know the building and all its occupants as well as he knows himself. This is a lesson of security which MACUSA had the great misfortune to learn at his expense, and Director Graves took an extremely personal interest in ensuring that the lesson was thoroughly beaten into the heads of even the lowliest janitor. He was almost never to be seen in his office any more. Rather, he stalked the halls with a fearsome scowl and an eye for every sort of trouble, no matter how miniscule.

My feelings for him were complicated—to say the very least! I convinced myself time and again that his gaze struck every person the way it did me, that his handsome looks were nothing to me when I was simply a lowly filing clerk, that the slight smile he gave me on one never-to-be-forgotten day was no more than a courtesy. When I feared him, I reminded myself that the man I had tried to adore was not this man, that this man was truly Percival Graves, and not some imposter. So I nurtured small affections in silence, beat back my fears, and resolved myself to look upon him as only a distant idol. And for a time this all worked, and I was happy.

But malignant things stirred in the corners of America, brought out of the mythic days by the machinations of the evil forces abroad in our time. In late August 1927, I was asked to participate in filing reports on objects—some cursed, some not—recovered from a house in the backcountry of Tennessee. I handled one piece after another, and it was only when two hundred artifacts had been catalogued did I discover that every curse identified had been identified only by me, and only by a single touch. My connexion to dark forces, researchers explained, gave me the singular ability to identify curses and dark magic which made me far too important to leave as a lowly clerk.

Overnight, I ascended from a position in the shadows of MACUSA to a place amid the highest seats of power. Without training or certification, I was brought into the circle of the best curse-breakers the Auror Office had. Yet I was an ornament to these great echelons of power, nothing more. I did my duty and obeyed orders, and kept my head bowed in reverence of those about me. My pay increased significantly, and I was at last able to purchase more than cursory furnishings for my small apartment.

Unfortunately, this dramatic ascent brought me into far closer contact with Director Graves than I could ever have wished. When the Senior Aurors brought back terrible cursed objects from their raids, or when unknown curses afflicted innocent souls, I was called upon to identify the magic. In many cases, I was also asked to remove the magic—for, on occasion, this was something I could do. Upon touching the object or person, I would draw the curse into myself, letting it be torn apart by the Obscurus. I disliked the task, for it left me clammy and shaking for hours afterwards, as if I had consumed something nauseating, and still I did it when the Director so commanded.

And he truly never spoke a word that was not in command. He bore himself with the gravitas of one whose power is inextricable from their very being. Yet still I knew that his power was neither selfish nor indiscriminate. Director Graves was a hard man, but not cruel, and certainly not unfeeling. Indeed, I came to realize that he felt more deeply than I had ever imagined. He concerned himself with the well-being of every person in the Woolworth Building, from the house-elves in the elevators all the way up to President Picquery herself, and took it upon himself to defend them.

Many missed this, because he was not soft. But I saw him many times go out of his way to look after some injured soul. An Auror whose mother was on her deathbed was suddenly given authorized leave because he had no more sick days; an elderly witch with dementia who violated rules of secrecy was given an official pardon and sent home to her family rather than being locked up; and so on, and so forth. His hand was never obvious in these events, but there all the same, for eyes that could see.

In the Auror Office, I often saw Director Graves at his kindest. A young woman with terrible nerves burst into tears at her desk after a nasty run-in with would-be modern Scourers and was called into the Director’s office: half an hour later, she emerged with a wobbly smile, a handkerchief monogrammed “P.G.”, and three days of paid leave. A young man working himself past the limits of health to categorize and prepare memorandums of conversation for an upcoming hearing related to awareness of Grindelwald’s followers within MACUSA arrived at work one morning to find that every single required form had been completed and filed: the Director was seen that day to nearly fall asleep at his desk.

All this is to merely say that I was privileged to bear witness to many facets of Director Graves’ exemplary character. If I had looked favorably upon him before, my sincerest admiration was now his. In the beginning, he rarely spoke to me unless to give a command. But my desk was near to his office, and it seemed that we kept similar sleepless hours. I was and remain a chronic insomniac, for nightmares are not conducive to sound sleep, and I arise early because even now I cannot rid myself of the perception that laziness is an ultimate sin. After a week or two at the job I realized that the Director was in much the same situation. I arrived at the building in the morning just before he did, and would leave only slightly before at night. Somehow, by God’s own miracle, he came into the habit of giving me a “good morning” and slight smile as he swept past my desk; eventually, I became bold enough to look in on him before departure and give a quick “good night”.

Such a contact was enough to intoxicate me. I came daringly to believe that I, perhaps, knew the man. For I had never seen him give such greetings to any others in the Office, not even to his most trusted Senior Aurors. Around others, for all his subtle kindnesses, he was cold and hard and unfeeling as stone. Director Graves rarely smiled at anyone. Positioned as I was, so near to him, I was able to observe him closely, and see that the smiles he granted me were truly rare and precious indeed.

Again, I would have been content with this state of affairs. My standards for happiness were abysmally low, based as they were in a lifetime’s worth of abuse and fear. I questioned nothing. If all that I would ever receive from the man who was the object of my most ardent affections, who occupied my dreams at night and stood phantasmally by my side in my darkest hours—if all that I would ever receive was a smile, that was to me the most singular of treasures. I was, indeed, happy.

October dawned gelid and grotesque, as is the custom of the month. All throughout the opening weeks of the month, I felt myself under the gaze of some unearthly force. I began to have the premonitory sensation that my perfect happiness was soon to draw to a close. Thus, when rumours began to creep through MACUSA of the acquisition of strange jewellery, recovered under the most mysterious and eerie of circumstances, I instantly knew that I was to become personally involved with the case.

The summons from Director Graves, when it came, was of no surprise. I collected myself and went immediately to meet with him. He had taken one of the heavily warded rooms reserved for magical experimentation and awaited me alone. He stood in the center of the room, beside a pedestal upon which rested an object covered with cloth. Leaning upon his cane, he could have passed ably for a portrait of an aging king. Despite the gravity of the moment, I could not help but admire him anew.

“Mr. Barebone,” he said by way of greeting. In his clear preoccupation, he did not smile. I was unaccountably disappointed.

“Director Graves,” I said, unable to hide the timidity with which I must always approach the great man. “I’m sorry for my lateness…”

He waved a hand, dismissing the thought. “The artifact I’m about to show you came into the possession of MACUSA barely twenty-four hours ago. So far, no one has been able to identify exactly what kind of magic is laid on it. Don’t let me down.”

It did not escape my notice that he said ‘me’, rather than a customary ‘us’. “Of course, sir,” I said, and stepped forward beside the pedestal. “What is it?”

With a single swift motion, the Director pulled the cloth from the artifact. For a moment, I could only stare, rendered mute by the phantasy before me. It was some sort of a tiara—it could be nothing else—with a band curiously elliptical and irregular. The front was tall, a rectangular projection as long as my forearm. It was chased all round with reliefs of unusual designs, puzzling geometries and fluid marine motifs, worked with precision and mature skill. The metal of which it was constructed was clearly gold, though the weird whitish opalescence hinted that there was another metal whose name I did not know alloyed with that gold.

I could have studied the thing for hours, but there was no time for that. “At your leisure, Mr. Barebone,” Director Graves said.

With great care, I placed my hands on either side of the tiara, holding the bands lightly. The thrum of strange magic was in the metal and seemed to call to me, for my blood raced in response. As trepidatious as ever, I shut my eyes tightly and reached out to that magic.

How can I begin to explain the sensation of this process? It is not touch and it is not sight, two of our most familiar senses; and though there are elements perhaps of the auditory or olfactory, it is closest in description to taste. But that is still not enough to convey the precise nature of my action upon the artifact. I cannot even declare this to be the fabled ‘sixth sense’, for that is mere intuition. No, this is a seventh sense, one that may be peculiar to me.

The sickly taste of the magic upon the tongues of mine was enough to make me retch. It was nothing I had ever encountered before, and yet its strange familiarity twisted at my nerves. I sought its source, for all magic has that. An enchanter must leave traces of himself, his ‘fingerprints’, upon that which he touches. His mark is plainly evident to eyes that can see. But whatever magic was upon this tiara—for it was not a curse, not as I then knew curses—had no source. There was no mark of a human caster. There was nothing at all. There was only the magic, springing from the object itself.

And then it reached out to me. I felt an exploratory touch upon my magic, the kiss of some vile alien body, and I cried out in alarm. I tried to pry my hands from the tiara, but I could not. I only clutched it more tightly, the metal biting into my palms and fingers. The wet contact of that magic, the stygian sound of things moving about me, closing in upon me, was utterly horrifying. I wrenched myself away, cocooning myself in shadows, petrified beyond words, and finally got my hands away from the tiara.

I collapsed to the floor, burning and bleeding, sobbing with fear and agony. At the first touch of hands upon me, I flinched away. But then I realized that Director Graves was the one trying to open my clenched fists and heal them. I stared into his face in incomprehension, at the lines of worry between his brows and his striking dark eyes, and felt that I was looking into the face of an alien being.

“Credence!” he said, brushing my hair from my eyes. “Are you all right?”

“Director,” I choked, clutching at the man’s jacket, “that’s not human magic.”

“What is it, then?” he demanded. His voice was sharp, but his hands were gentle as he gathered me up and bore me toward the door.

Visions of empty stars and things writhing beneath the serene sea filled my eyes. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know.”


	2. Chapter 2

I have little recollection of the period that followed. For two days, I was insensate in the hospital, dreaming of dark and terrible things. I am told that shadows curled around me as if to be my shield, and strange voices were heard beneath the pallid October sky in the streets around the hospital. When I awoke, I felt detached from my body, as though another guided my hands and tongue. The syllables of speech were rotten in my mouth, as if my body had become septic, infected with an undiscovered disease.

Upon my return to my apartment, I petted my cat with frantic determination to anchor myself again in familiar reality, until she tired of me and darted away to hide beneath the bed and hiss at me, a mundane little monster. Mechanically, I stripped out of my clothes—which I had been wearing now for three days, since my collapse in the research chambers—and stepped into the bathroom, intending to bathe and then fall at last into the safety of my own bed. But the sight in the mirror stopped me before I had a single foot over the threshold.

The thing in the mirror was not my reflection.

In two quick paces I was across the room, pressing my hand to the cold glass as if to a window. I could see the room around me—though a little warped, by the dim light and the cheapness of the mirror’s glass—but I could not see myself. There was a slender form, the blank and ugly white of candle wax, a smear of paint upon a canvas, wavering before me with its hand pressed palm to palm with mine, surrounded by a sickly roiling darkness. It seemed to lean toward me, a stretched mouth opening, and I knew a flash of fear.

I pulled away from the mirror and rubbed at my eyes, certain that this must be mere exhaustion, and when I had blinked once or twice the vision was gone and only my own tired face looked back at me. There was a faint fog on the mirror, as if of breath, though I had not come close enough to cause that; I ignored it steadfastly as I bathed, determined to sleep.

I avoided the silver gaze of the mirror on the next morning as I dressed and hurried to the Woolworth Building, determined to be at Director Graves’ disposal that very day. As I entered the building, I glanced up at the Magical Threat Exposure Clock—as is the wont of every MACUSA employee upon arrival in the morning—and stopped in my tracks. The clock’s hand was all the way to the far side of the meter, at the farthest point of the red, as if the Apocalypse was coming upon us all.

Because of the nature of the clock, its position as the warning siren of danger for all the people of America, I was not the only one to stop and gape up at the clock in something between awe and terror. What could have happened to bring down this calamity? Could it be Grindelwald’s escape from Azkaban? Or worse? The streams of people normally going in and out were stopped, frozen all across the atrium, watching the clock with bated breath.

“Mr. Barebone!” The Director’s sharp voice was enough to shatter the suspended moment. He stood at the top of the steps, looking down at me.

“Yes, sir,” I said, gazing up at him and walking through the parting crowd, drawn like an iron filing to a magnet.

“My office,” he said simply, and turned in a swirl of black coat.

Ignoring the stares of the people around me, watching in silent distrust, I hurried up the steps and followed Director Graves as fast as I could. Any sense of familiarity in the halls was gone. I could feel the warped dimensions of its space, triangles with two-hundred-and-seventy degrees sketched upon spheres nested like dolls, all to make space for MACUSA. Always it had been easy to forget the nature of this place, but now I could feel the lurking stillness of the bare lit hallways that sat furthest away from the heart of the structure, corridors with locked doors that opened into nothing, waiting.

The Director’s office was a sanctuary and a reprieve. The door slammed behind me as I entered and the sense of watchful danger was immediately gone. Director Graves himself was already standing behind his desk, a pillar of strength and stability. “The doctors have already informed me that you went home at ten o’clock last night after your awakening,” he said, meeting my eyes directly. “What I need to know is this: what time did you leave your house this morning?”

I had to think about the question, for I hadn’t really looked at the clock. I had eaten a quick breakfast, fed the cat, and departed in haste. “At eight o’clock, sir. I was rather later than usual…”

“I can’t blame you,” he said. “Not after what happened with that damn tiara.”

At the thought of the thing, I shuddered. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“For what? You couldn’t have done anything about it,” Director Graves said. He paused and studied me. “Are you all right, Barebone?”

Of course I was not—who would be, when they’d spent three days trapped in a nightmare of their own creation?—but I put on a brave face. “I am, sir.”

Director Graves smiled at me, then, a small and sad thing. “It’s all right if you’re not,” he said.

“I am,” I insisted. I could have slapped myself for breaking that moment in favor of seeming strong, for it was a rare moment of direct affection. How long had I yearned for the slightest touch of a hand, let alone an embrace?

“Well.” He nodded and looked past me, at the door, then back to me. “We’ve got a problem, as you can see from the threat clock. Unfortunately, there’s no simple explanation. Word from the Ministry of Magic tells us that Grindelwald is still locked up in Azkaban, so we’ve got no good leads. Branch offices have all been notified, and investigations are underway across the country.”

“What am I to do, sir?” I asked.

The Director’s lips quirked. “You’re going with me to Innsmouth, Massachusetts,” he said.

At that moment I had no real idea of what to say or do. The question emerged from my mouth without conscious thought: “When do we leave?”

“Tomorrow. No other questions? Why we’re going, how long we’ll be gone?”

“Those don’t matter, sir,” I said with plain honesty. “I’ve no family to worry about me—I’ll leave my cat with the Goldsteins—and I’m yours to direct.”

“A cat?”

Of all the things to remark on—and yet I was ecstatic. He had really noticed me, had asked about me, about my life! A strange thing, to be so concerned with such feelings when the possibility of demise hung over us all, but the human heart is strange. “Yes,” I said. “Her name is Bell.”

Director Graves truly smiled at that. “Good cat name,” he said. “Make sure to tell her goodbye from me, too, Barebone. We’ll leave by the earliest train. Meet me at the doors by, oh, four o’clock?”

That evening, I left Bell under the watchful eyes of the Goldstein sisters, who also promised to look in on my apartment while I was gone.

“Be careful, Credence,” Tina cautioned me. “If the Director’s going, this won’t be easy.”

“And you make sure you talk to him proper,” Queenie said with a wink. She, of course, knew of my feelings; not only was I as transparent as glass (I frequently ceased to breathe in his presence) but she was also a notable Legilimens and at that time I had not mastered the skill of hiding my thoughts. The Director was an accomplished Occlumens, so she could not advise me as to the state of his feelings, but her optimism on my behalf was unwavering.

I met Director Graves on the steps of the Woolworth Building at four o’clock sharp the next morning. The city was still half-asleep, only the earliest factory workers and newspapermen going to their appointed places. I carried only a small valise, for we were not going off into parts unknown. The state of Massachusetts is well-known to be strange, but even they have purveyors of personal conveniences.

“Ready, Mr. Barebone?” the Director asked. He looked imposing, in his long dark coat and fine blue scarf; though he did not wear a hat, I was sure that he was the most well-dressed man anywhere in the whole city of New York.

“I am, sir,” I said. I felt small and shabby beside him, though I had two or three inches of height on him, and was in my best suit. He had that way about him, though. Even President Picquery did not look quite so glorious with Percival Graves beside her.

He walked swiftly and with confidence, despite his limp and cane. I fell in quite naturally beside him, matching his stride easily. We did not speak much on our way to Union Station, but this too felt natural and right. Of course we did not have to purchase tickets: the Director simply tapped two slips of scrap paper with his wand and they were transformed into exactly the right tokens for departure.

Our compartment was small, but private. “It’s a long ride from here to Arkham,” the Director explained, “and from there we’ve got to go by bus to Innsmouth. No railroad through there anymore.”

“Why are we going to Arkham, sir?” I finally dared to ask.

“It’s about that tiara,” the Director said with a heavy sigh. Lounging like this, legs apart and leaning back with his elbow braced against the wall and his head in his hand, he could have passed for one of Leyendecker’s illustrations. “It was retrieved by accident. Provenance shows that the damn thing came out of Innsmouth, Massachusetts, just up the road from Arkham. Some No-Maj came out of there in July, screaming about terrors and unholy acts, but nobody really paid attention. You always get that kind of thing in the backwater of this country.”

I refrained here from mentioning the apocryphal stories of devilish couplings under violet moons on certain unholy nights, thrilling tales that had circulated throughout the New Salem congregation as replacements for the devil-spawned stories in Weird Tales or other pulp magazines. Somehow, those always took place in backwaters, too. As an aside, in the wake of what happened in Innsmouth I am forced often to wonder about the truth of those stories told under cover of hymn and verse in the dim evening services. Of course they would have been garbled in the retelling through No-Maj lips. Even so, one cannot help but consider the possibilities.

“Why would we be investigating Innsmouth?” I asked, for lack of anything better. “I mean, sir, aren’t there better people than me to take along?”

“So far, you’re the only one to have activated any kind of magic on that tiara,” the Director said. He watched me through half-lidded eyes. He might have looked as though he were sleeping, but the whole attitude of his being suggested that of a great predatory cat. “I wouldn’t leave you behind.”

“But…if those stories you mentioned were true, then a team of Aurors might have been better.”

The Director’s expression tightened minutely. “No one would have let me take a team of Aurors.”

I felt as if I were standing upon a precipice with a great fire below, but I had to ask. “Why not?”

He was silent for a long moment. Finally, he turned his head and looked out the window at the dim landscape shuttling by, as if he could not bear to see my face. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Barebone, but I’m in disgrace.”

“Sir!”

“It’s true,” he said bitterly. “They’ve delegated the majority of my power to others. I’m still nominally the Director of Magical Security, but Picquery is looking for my replacement. I can’t cast half the spells I could before…and no one’s bothered to put me on trial yet, but half the Senate wants to. The only way we’ve kept it all out of the papers is because the Censorship Office is working overtime.”

Yes, it is a sad state of affairs, but it is true that MACUSA retains the right to restrict the speech of its citizens when it deems necessary. I wish to believe that it is an infrequently-used power, but I personally know several Censors, and there is more happening in the magical community of America than ever reaches even the last page of the New York Ghost. “You’ve no fault in any of it, sir,” I said earnestly.

“You’re just about the only one who believes that.” His stare was fixed now on some distant point, cold and hard. “This is a case, definitely. Something’s going on in Innsmouth. It’s probably nothing significant, though, so they’ve sent you and I because we’re the albatrosses around MACUSA’s neck.”

“I believe that about myself, but _never_ about you,” I said hotly.

At that, the Director looked at me, visibly surprised. “Oh?”

“I know that I was only given a job because I needed to be kept under guard and no one wanted to try to execute a child,” I said. The old leather of the seat creaked beneath me as I shifted, willing back the darkness that threatened to overtake me as I recalled the horrors of those terrible nights last December. “I’m useful now, but I wasn’t before. I know they’d rather not have me to worry about. But you—sir, you’re a hero.”

There was a moment of silence. The Director’s expression had softened a bit, and he smiled a little. “Thank you, Credence,” he said. “That…means more to me than you know.”

I ducked my head, feeling myself blush. My first name. He’d spoken my first name. “Sir…”

“Hold your head up,” he chastised gently. “If we’re going to be albatrosses, might as well be proud of that.”

So I lifted my head and saw him still looking at me. With what I felt was impossible daring, I met his gaze, and, to my surprise, he did not look away.

We sat in that gloomy train compartment for far too long. Outside the door, silhouettes passed back and forth, as inconsequential to us as our movements are to the planets. This train, so early to board, was very nearly empty; on the one occasion I rose to stretch my legs and go about in the corridor, I saw only one or two other silent passengers. The train was dark and cold; out the cracking windows, the sky was low and gray and still. There was no sense that this was the time before a storm, for the clouds did not boil or turn green in preparation for rain or worse. No, they only sat, hanging uneasily in the sky. The train, however, did not notice. It rattled and bumped across the vacant countryside, past blasted field and through tangled forest, passing north to Arkham.

The city is not so far from Salem. Of course the chequered history of that town is enough to give any witch nightmares; but Arkham has largely escaped the blame here. Footnotes in history textbooks will occasionally note that one Daniel Andrew fled Salem before his trial and stayed briefly in Arkham, before disappearing again to parts unknown. It is usually presumed that he is dead, but eyes that can see may understand the implications of his inexorable journey toward the coast. Few real witches even lived at Salem (the most famous being Giles Corey, who by his strength of character alone saved much of his community), but Daniel Andrew may have been another of those true practitioners. His quiet presence in the margin of the terrible story of Salem brings a haunting shadow, for it is only shortly after his disappearance that the prosperous town of Innsmouth appears without warning in the histories of Massachusetts. Perhaps the events are unrelated.

At half past seven in the morning, we disembarked on a nearly empty platform. There were few people about except a harried valet or two, and the few others coming off the train into Arkham. The skies had finally begun to weep a slow, damp mist; it was uncomfortably cold, and I huddled deeper into the collar of my coat. No one looked at us as we walked down the road. I felt strangely as though they were turning around to look at us after we’d passed.

The Director seemed unaffected by it. “This rain is going to ruin us both,” he said wryly, pausing under the gaily red-and-yellow striped awning of a closed grocery. He leaned his cane against the lichen-crusted brick wall, stripped off a glove, and ran a hand over his head, brushing away the water beading up over his slicked-back hair.

I followed suit, doing the best I could with my curls. It was an unfashionable cut, too long for modern style and too short to tie back and excessively messy by comparison to the young men of my age who worked at MACUSA, but I could not bear to have it any shorter or straighter. I planned to grow it out as long as my shoulders at least; for now, it was just about at my chin and I was happy enough with it. “Where are we going, sir?”

“We should find somewhere to get breakfast, first,” he said.

“Restaurants don’t do that much, sir,” I said.

I believe that was the first time I ever saw Director Graves make a face. “We need _something_ ,” he muttered. “I refuse to conduct an investigation without coffee.”

“Coffee?”

I must have sounded quite judgmental, for the Director turned a gimlet eye upon me. “Is there something wrong with that?”

“It’s a sin,” I said.

“You do _magic_.”

“Magic can only land you in hell, sir,” I said earnestly. “Coffee gives you _insomnia_.”

He laughed at that, and the cold of the day was banished by a warm glow of pride and fellow feeling. “Come on, then,” he said. “I’ll get hot coffee, and you can have some tepid water, or something.”

October is no time to be outside, especially on a frigid evening on the coast of Massachusetts. I was used, even then, to the sounds of seagulls and the sight of the wine-dark sea, but then only from the places where one might see it from the secure streets of New York. This was the first time in my life I had been so near the coast. In our search, we came to a place where the whole of the pale shoreline was visible, cold Atlantic waves crashing and pounding upon the sand.

I stopped in my tracks at the side of the road, looking out across the ocean. The rhythm of the surf seemed to call out to me, and my magic thrummed in answer. The gray water, hiding mysteries in its depths, whispered to me on the wind, tempting me with promises of great dreams and decadent treasures. I was paralyzed before it, awed by the sheer size, the vastness of the open sky—something that I, a city boy, had never before experienced. I felt small. It was not the smallness of anonymity in a crowd, but the smallness of a bacterium beneath a microscope. There was a lonely sense to the view, as if only I and the strange watcher in the water were present there.

“Are you coming?” the Director asked, and I jumped at the sound of his voice to hurry along with him in search of somewhere warm and dry.


	3. Chapter 3

We found a small and slightly dilapidated coffeehouse, populated primarily by people from Arkham’s infamous Miskatonic University. A group of smart college girls held a study meeting at a table by the window, talking of chemistry and physics with a worldly air; a few stylish young men sipped coffee and languidly spoke of Herbert Hoover and Alfred Smith and their chances in the election next month; a gray-bearded and bespectacled professor read a book of poetry by the fire. Director Graves and I took a table in the corner, and he ordered for himself a coffee and for me—despite my protestations of the cost—a hot chocolate.

Until the drinks were brought, we sat in silence, consumed with our own thoughts. I glanced at the Director periodically, wondering what he considered behind that impassive face. When the hot chocolate arrived, I took a moment simply to savor the idea of drinking it, looking down at the rich brew with delighted apprehension.

“Have you never had this before?” the Director inquired.

“No, sir,” I said, looking up at him with undue shyness. Chocolate was too decadent and too expensive in my former life. And even now, fear prevented me from taking advantage of my new life to indulge myself in such vices.

His eyebrows shot up in alarm. “You’ve been in MACUSA for almost a year, and no one’s bothered to introduce you to hot chocolate?”

“No,” I murmured, feeling horribly embarrassed.

“Someone is going to get fired over this,” he said calmly, taking a long swallow of coffee. “I swear that they’ve been neglecting their duties.”

“Surely you don’t care about that.”

He paused and then set his coffee cup down with a small bump. “I do. Technically, all employees are to carry chocolate—safety regulation regarding Dementors after the Brits botched a job—but in practice that mostly just means you can get people to make you hot chocolate instead of coffee, if you’re so inclined. And no one put you on that.”

I hesitated, and then said quietly, “I don’t know anyone well enough to ask.”

For a moment, there was dead silence at the table. I did not know where to look, or what else I might say—that was far too personal a revelation to be made to such an important personage as Director Graves! I thought that I might apologize, but he spoke before I could. “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I had no idea it was like that for you. I thought you worked late out of necessity, not…”

“Please don’t,” I said, half begging. Such a man as this should never apologize to one such as myself. “It’s no fault of yours.”

“Everything that happens in MACUSA is my fault,” he said obstinately. I sat back, shocked, but he continued: “That’s the task of the Director of Magical Security. I can’t…I might not be able to fight off a damn Dark wizard, but I sure as hell could have made sure you weren’t lonely.”

“Sir!” I said loudly, and half the coffeehouse turned to stare. I must have turned a brilliant shade of red, for one of the young men giggled and a girl gave me a sympathetic look. When the minor commotion calmed, I continued more quietly. “Your job isn’t to look after clerks, sir.”

The Director shook his head. His hand, lying palm-down upon the table, trembled. I had never seen it before, and had even begun to believe that it was a rumor meant for mean and jealous persons, but there it was, undeniably proved. “It is,” he said. “I…you remember what I said on the train.”

I nodded silently. I could not help but remember it. Albatrosses, doomed to hang about some eternal mariner’s neck, a reminder of the sins and tragedies of MACUSA.

“Besides,” he added, “I feel a certain sense of personal responsibility to you.”

“Why?” I asked, flummoxed.

He smiled wryly. “I wasn’t the only person Grindelwald went for. You got hurt—and by that bastard wearing my face, no less! Someone had to take an interest in you. Make sure you didn’t fall through the cracks again.”

A sudden thought occurred to me, and I was not sure if it were terrible or beautiful. “Sir…were you the one who brought me into MACUSA?”

“They’d have thrown you in a cell and forgot about you or worse, if I hadn’t stepped in,” he said.

If I had been standing, I might well have fainted from shock. He cared about me. Those smiles had been sincere, not perfunctory; his treatment of me was indeed exceptional, and I was light-headed with profound joy and a sudden fear that, perhaps, I had somehow disappointed. “Thank you, sir.”

“It’s the least I could do,” he said. For the briefest moment, his expression was filled with a strange sort of yearning, and then he shook it off. “I don’t know why we’re talking about all this. We’ve got a case to deal with, no matter how…what’s a good word for this?”

“Insipid?” I suggested, thinking of the small-mindedness of someone who would consider the Director to be incapable of handling something more serious.

“I like that,” he said. He took out his wand and tapped the side of my cup, murmuring a charm I did not quite catch. Instantly, though it had gone quite cold as we talked, it began to steam again. “Go ahead. Don’t let me keep you this time.”

With some trepidation, I took a sip. It was the most singularly delightful thing I had ever tasted, sweet and savory at once, thick and delightful on the tongue. It banished instantly any melancholy I felt in favor of a flood of joy. I could scarcely believe it. When I opened my eyes again, still in transports of sheer happiness, I found the Director watching me with a pleased expression. He did not speak of it, though, and we finished our drinks in companionable silence.

As we made to depart, he stopped for a moment to speak to the proprietor, a well-fed man with a broad face and pleasant smile. He greeted us cheerfully, but clearly the Director’s mind was on other things. “Is there a bus to Innsmouth?” he asked without preamble.

“A bus to Innsmouth?” the proprietor asked, nonplussed. He had a heavy New England accent, of the sort I had heard only rarely in New York. He folded his arms and shook his head, the pleasantry fading from his expression. “Ayuh, there’s a bus. Joe Sargent’s old rattletrap. Runs right through Innsmouth on its way to Newburyport. Cheap enough, but gets no custom except some of those odd-looking fellows who’re native up there. Stops at the corner at Oak and Washington at eleven every night and drives back afore midnight. Don’t know why you’d want to go, though.”

“Oh?” the Director said, giving an enquiring look. “Is there something wrong with the town?”

The proprietor shrugged. “Queer sort of town, isn’t it? Half the houses empty and the old refinery falling in, nowadays. They do tell tales—and I’m a modern man, I don’t put stock in such—but they do tell tales of old Captain Marsh and devil-worship, round about eighteen forty-five.”

“Devil worship?” I asked, deeply impressed.

“Oh, and worse!” the proprietor promised. “You ought to hear what they do say about the reef just off the coast, Devil’s Reef if I remember the name right. Sticks clear up out of the water, though not an island, and they claim that there are devils seen up there on those black rocks. A whole legion, they do say, sunning themselves or crawling in and out of caves. At the end of the shipping days sailors would go out of their way to avoid it.”

The gleam of storytelling was in his eye, and I could see that the Director was avid to keep it there as long as he could. “That’s a story if I ever heard one,” he said. He leaned upon the counter, relaxed and interested, the picture of a model traveler. “My nephew and I are going to visit a relative in Newburyport, but I’ve got an interest in…antiques, shall we say. Heard there was stuff to see in Innsmouth.”

At that, the proprietor looked a touch intrigued. “What’s your interest?”

“Foreign jewellery,” the Director said, casting me a look.

“Well, I don’t mind telling you that there used to be talk of a queer sort of that stuff, sold by sailors and refinery men when the bosses wasn’t around,” the proprietor said, leaning close and speaking low. Clearly he felt that he was imparting a great secret, at least the great secret of common knowledge and rumor. “But I’ve heard tell that the Marsh refinery, for all it’s dilapidated, is still refining gold. No one knows the mystery of where they get it, since they don’t do half the buying they ought for the enormous lot of ingots they ship out.”

The Director nodded slowly. “That’s odd.”

“Odd’s not half the word for that town!” the proprietor proclaimed. “They aren’t ordinary, not by anyone’s measure. There’s a look about them—the Innsmouth look, you might say. Makes a man’s skin pimple up. You’ll see it in Joe Sargent, you take his bus. Narrow heads and bulgy, stary eyes like frogs, on some of them, and half of ’em got mouths like frogs too. Scaly skin, like they’ve all got smallpox scars worse than any I’ve ever seen before.”

The picture that the man painted of these people was neither welcoming nor reassuring. What sort of place were Director Graves and I walking into? It sounded like a place out of nightmares.

“Queerest thing, though,” the proprietor went on, warming to his work. “The fish at Innsmouth swarm like nowhere else. No one’s sure how the four hundred they say live there manage to export so much, but they’ve got the best fish and lobster in the country, and export it by truck. The wealth of that town’s in the sea, you mark my words!”

“Well, I’m more interested in that jewellery you mentioned,” the Director said, steering the conversation back to our waters. I was not quite sure how we would extract what we needed from this lecture on local mythology, but I trusted that the Director could manage it. “Any of it in Arkham?”

The proprietor nodded. “Up at Miskatonic, they’ve got a few specimens. I’ve never seen them myself, but I’ve sure heard about ’em.”

“Perfect,” the Director said decisively. He stood and offered his hand to the proprietor, who shook it firmly. “We might be back to loiter in your establishment until the evening bus comes, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all!” the proprietor said. He paused, and furrowed his brow in sudden seriousness. “I ought to warn you, though. Strangers aren’t welcome in Innsmouth. There are businessmen, government agents too, who’ve gone missing there. And one fellow—raving now—locked up in Danvers after they did something awful to him.”

The Director smiled, confident, self-assured. “I’m sure we’ll do just fine, but thanks for the warning,” he said.

Outside in the cold again, we stopped at the curb to talk. “Will we go to Miskatonic, then?” I asked, glancing up and down the street.

“I think so,” the Director said. “It’s—what, nine o’clock? And the bus doesn’t leave until eleven tonight. We’ll have to entertain ourselves until then.”

In the interest of some brevity, I shall draw a summary veil over the day. We walked to Miskatonic University. There, we made our way to the Exhibit Museum, to pay a visit to the special collection they housed of all the strangest things brought back by the expeditions they funded to the dark corners of the earth. The curator, George Grewe, was interested by our request to see the Innsmouth Artifacts, which, like the Orne Collection of artifacts from around the globe, languished in the back corners of the museum. He took us there himself, not giving the job to one of the tour guides. There, with the help of some minor memory modification magic cast upon the old curator, I was able to contact the artifacts long enough to confirm that these, too, held that disturbing magic.

For a few hours, we dithered in Miskatonic’s Orne Library, enjoying the quiet and the books. We read portions of histories of the area, finding that even before the vaguely-discussed plague and the troubles inflicted by the Civil War the town had been insular and strange. Obed Marsh, who had founded the Marsh Refinery, came up frequently in those pages. It was he who had brought the town to a height of glory, and also he who had been involved in some rioting and deaths in the town. Strange happenings, but no stranger than any others that persons aware of magic knew.

It was here that we first read of the “Esoteric Order of Dagon”, a sort of a cult which had appeared in Innsmouth when the town began to die when the fisheries were going barren. Shortly thereafter, abundantly fine fishing returned and remained; as a result, the Esoteric Order also remained, gaining a kind of holiness in a town without much else to believe. It replaced the Freemasons in Innsmouth, and apparently had taken up its headquarters in the old Masonic Hall on New Church Green. “We’ll have to look into that, I think,” the Director said.

We ate a quiet and pleasant lunch at a nice restaurant. It was crab, caught fresh in the waters off the coast, a rare treat for me. I was unused to such expensive luxuries and would not have bought it for myself; but, as with the incident in the coffeehouse earlier, Mr. Graves insisted. We did not speak much at the meal, but I could not mind. I appreciated our silences nearly as much as I appreciated our conversations. I wondered what the world saw, when they looked upon the Director and I. He had claimed me for his nephew, and something about that rankled. I would prefer not to be known as a young relation.

Amusement was difficult to come by in the afternoon, and we largely concerned ourselves with taking time to practice. The Director—Mr. Graves, as he insisted that I call him—desired to know the full extent of my skill in offensive magics. There was an empty lot, walled off on three sides and not difficult to conceal with a few skillful charms on the fourth, in which we practiced. I did not know how to cast many offensive spells, but I was always a quick study in magic, and in short order Mr. Graves had me casting Shield Charms and Trip Jinxes with great accuracy.

“That’s all you’ll need, hopefully. I’ll handle any real fireworks,” he said with a rather cocky grin. He had not cast a complex spell in all the time we had been here, yet I believed him fully. His hand tremor, I noticed, was imperceptible—if, indeed, it existed at all. He carried himself easily, gracefully, even with the limp. “Just don’t forget to get creative. I’ve used all sorts of things in fights that I wasn’t supposed to. Magic’s magic.”

I took the lesson to heart immediately, and imagined all the ways I might use Wingardium Leviosa or Color-Changing Flames in combat. We talked of inconsequential things—of my cat, of his library—over dinner at a different restaurant, and after that we simply walked for a while, sat upon the shore and looked at the sea, and returned to the coffeehouse just before closing to sit and have a final drink and enjoy the warmth. I very nearly forgot why we were really here. We might have simply been two odd friends on a brief holiday, rather than investigators on a dangerous case. I recall that day with fondness.

Then, at shortly past eleven, a bus rattled up to the corner of Oak and Washington.

Mr. Graves and I had been standing on the corner for about an hour and a half when it arrived. The street was empty by this time, only the two of us left to loiter at the curb. The streetlights hummed and flickered, and distantly one could hear the surf upon the beach. There were, otherwise, no sounds at all, and the approach of the bus was an offensive clamor in the peace of the night.

To my surprise, no passengers disembarked as the vehicle wheezed to a halt. It sounded as though its axles were near to breaking and it looked as though its sides would disintegrate from rust. A barely-legible sign in the window proclaimed: “Arkham-Innsmouth-Newb’port”, and so we knew this was the correct conveyance.

When the bus had been halted for two or three minutes, the driver stepped down. Even under the orange glow of the streetlight I could not make out all of his face, and yet I felt an aversion to his whole presence. He shambled when he walked, and though I could not blame him for his posture—at that time, I still bore myself with the stooped carriage of a broken man—still, the attitude unnerved me. There was a smell of fish.

“Didn’t expect two gentlemen waiting for the bus this fine evening,” he said.

“On our way to Newburyport,” Mr. Graves said. “How much is the fare?”

“Sixty cents today and sixty cents tomorrow,” the driver—who must be Joe Sargent—said.

Mr. Graves raised his brows, mildly contemptuous. “Split fare?”

“We’ll be stopping at Innsmouth overnight,” the man said. “Won’t get there until half past two in the morning. Leave at eight for Arkham.” I winced. Eight? Then again, we would not be leaving immediately; we had business in Innsmouth which would require us to spend more than one night.

“Is there anywhere to stay overnight?”

The man’s eyes, beneath his flat cap, shone with queer light, reflecting the glow of the streetlamp in an odd way. “Ayuh. The Gilman House,” he said. “Nice place.”

“Fine,” said Mr. Graves. He glanced at me, and—taking it for a cue—I dug in my pockets to take out a No-Maj dollar. I handed it to Sargent and he took it.

“Might as well go,” he said. “Won’t be none but you tonight.”

We boarded the bus and sat side by side at the far back. Sargent paid us no mind, climbing into his seat and whistling a tune which I recognized shortly as “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again”. The bus started with an irritated wheeze, and we were off toward Innsmouth.


	4. Chapter 4

Neither Mr. Graves nor I spoke for a while. Arkham bumped past in flashes of streetlight and shadow, dark windows watching us go. Finally we broke out of the town and onto the open road between Arkham and Innsmouth. It was not particularly bright: the new moon had only just passed on the 25th of the month, and tomorrow would be the 30th. The stars grew brighter and brighter as we passed away from the lights of Arkham; there was not even a glow on the horizon to suggest Newburyport. By this cold, eerie starlight, I could just make out the desolate world through which we drove. There were no trees to speak of, only hillocky land and sparse shrubs. Out the window the water could be seen, a sheet of black darker than even the sky.

We passed away from the main highway and onto the concourse that would lead us up to Innsmouth. This road was clearly poorly traveled and ill-kept; Mr. Graves and I were jostled greatly and I was severely discomforted. The bus crossed creaking wooden bridges from time to time, over what must have been tidal creeks, invisible except as grim trenches in the dark landscape. Periodically, off and away from the road, the dismally ruined foundation walls of houses could be seen, ramparts of bygone times shown only by the faintest astral illumination.

“There’s no wizards in Innsmouth,” Mr. Graves said suddenly. In the darkness of the bus, I could only just make out his silhouette. He spoke softly, so that Joe Sargent could not hear us over the noise of the bus, but at this small distance I could hear him perfectly.

“Why not?”

“Wizards like cities, unless they’re the kind to go out West and get away from MACUSA,” Mr. Graves said. “Safety in numbers.”

I thought of New Salem. “I see.”

“There’s nothing about this place in MACUSA records,” Mr. Graves said. He sounded quite distinctly frustrated. “As if it’s been wiped out, or was never there at all. By all rights Innsmouth shouldn’t even exist.”

“Maybe there’s just never been wizards living there.”

“Something like that, in Massachusetts? Salem could never have happened anywhere else. Back in the colonial days, Massachusetts was the beachhead for wizarding families to settle. Half of them convicted by the No-Maj government and sentenced to transportation, the rest running for a better life than what they could get in the old country.”

All of this was new to me, a secret history I had never thought to imagine. “People didn’t go to other colonies?”

“They did, sometimes. But most put down roots right here, up and down the coast. Every town’s got a wizard, somewhere among the founders.”

“Was your family like that?”

“You know Gondolphus Graves was my ancestor?”

“Of course.”

“So you know that we were here from the first.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“For what? History hasn’t been first on your mind.”

I wish that I could describe this scene with the perfect clarity that it has in my memory, but that perfect clarity is mostly of darkness, of the sensation of Mr. Graves pressed against me from shoulder to hip in the cramped back of the bus, of salt on the air and the faint scent of his cologne. And his voice, indelibly etched upon my soul. “Where did your family come from?”

“Ireland,” he said. “Haven’t got the accent anymore, we’ve been American too long.”

“I had no idea.”

“Now you know.”

There was a moment of silence. I was very tired; the day had been long, and I could not stop thinking about all the sudden revelations with which I had been struck. Finally, I said, “Thank you.”

He sounded surprised. “For what?”

“I know this is an investigation, but…” I hesitated, and then took the plunge. “This has been better than many days I can remember.”

“I’m glad,” he said, after a moment. There was silence, and I thought for a moment that was the end of the conversation. But he continued: “I can say the same thing.”

My pulse beat a strange flutter in my throat, and I could not speak. This was the terror of the unknown, the glimpse of that which lies beyond all time and space, the view of strange landscapes and dreams of the impossible. I did not know how to proceed, for there was no map in this uncharted place, at least no map which I possessed. I could only feel the awe of this great thing I confronted, this great god that looked not with its eyes but with its mind, and tremble.

The rest of the drive was spent in silence. I was acutely aware of Mr. Graves’ presence, of the closeness of him. I faintly hoped that he was similarly aware of me.

Just as Sargent had said, we put into Innsmouth at half past two in the morning. As we drove through the streets, I had the distinct feeling of being watched. The streetlights were sparse, when they existed at all, and they were old-fashioned gas lamps, great glass globes that hung like dull and malicious red stars along the street, rather than the electric light to which I was accustomed. In their dim light, we could see the gaping mouths of alleys. A few times, I thought that I saw the shadows moving, as if people moved just past the reach of the lights. I dismissed this, however: there was no sign of such industries as would cause people to be awake at this damned hour.

We disembarked onto the square before the Gilman House. There was no one about. I glanced up distrustfully at the sinking façade of the hotel. It was tall, crowned with a cupola, and the paint peeled and crumbled and chipped away. Clearly no work had been done on the building for a while. It added to the air of general decrepitude, as if we stood in a ghost town.

Mr. Graves stepped off before me, leaning heavily on his cane; despite his stern appearance and vitality, I could sense that he was tiring. I followed him off the bus—or made to, in any case; I was stopped by a touch on my arm. I turned upon the step of the bus to face Sargent. “Yes?”

“Here,” Sargent said, and dropped a quarter, a dime, and a nickel into my palm. “Your change. I forgot to give it to you when you got on.”

“Thank you,” I murmured, observing his face briefly and for the first time. In the streetlight, I could see him well at last. His cheeks were sunken, and the skin was scabrous, as if the man were ill. His eyes were indeed oddly bulgy, and set high upon his face, giving him a strange aspect. “Good night, sir.”

He smiled, drawing back his rubbery lips. The teeth were craggy and mossy, unsettling. “Good night to you, young man.” I backed off the bus, stepping down to the sidewalk

I wondered what sort of life this man led, to be so malformed. Was Innsmouth one of those towns like those described by Hutchins in his infamous Yale lecture? That was not so long ago, after all; the lecture had only been given in 1903. My erstwhile mother had attended; I was nearly raised on the precepts the good Reverend had delivered. There was a habit of polygamy, of a certain sort of incest, and other degenerate practices in lost New England towns. Old family names fell into disrepair amid the desolation and monotony of the dying country; religion and morality became foreigners to all inhabitants. These were known facts.

My mother had not appreciated Rev. Hutchin’s solution—increased immigration to the country and to these towns specifically, in order to rejuvenate the area—but she had taken to heart and drilled into my head the idea that, away from the metropolitan areas, I might find degeneration and degradation that surpassed all imagining. The sheer decadence on display in these places was very nearly legendary, and so I could not be surprised at the general attitude of Innsmouth, which could have fit easily into the Rev. Hutchin’s lectures.

“This is a wonderful place,” Mr. Graves said dryly. He shook his head, looking about us. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a town quite so…”

“Ill-used,” I supplied.

“No, no, I was thinking more along the lines of ‘disturbing’,” he said. He sniffed the air and scowled. “They haven’t got a cannery, but it all smells like fish anyway.”

I had noticed the smell, but had accepted it as a fact of life. There were plenty of worse smells in the world, and I suspected I had experienced more of them in my short life than Mr. Graves had in his long one. “It is a fishing town, sir,” I said.

“I suppose you’re right,” Mr. Graves said. He glanced up and down the street. The hair on the back of my neck prickled as a chill wind whispered down the street, over the slimy cobblestones and around the buildings. “I think we’d better get inside.”

The lobby of the Gilman House, while certainly grimy and unwelcoming, was a sight better than the chthonic streets outside. There was electric light here, a small mercy; and the shabby clerk with whom Mr. Graves wasted no words. He simply paid two dollars for two nights and we went up to the room. The clerk had what that man in Arkham called the “Innsmouth look” about him: a similar visage to that of Joe Sargent.

We had Room 428 on the top floor; large, but without running water, which clearly irked Mr. Graves to no end. I forgot often that he was a man used to the fine things of the world, and took many things for conveniences which I regarded still as luxuries. The room was mean and dingy, with two windows that looked out upon a small dilapidated courtyard and the broken roofs beyond, and two lateral doors connecting to the rooms on either side. At the end of the corridor was our running water: a bathroom which barely rated the name, with its ancient fixtures, mildewed wooden paneling, and flickering electric light.

At this point a problem arose, which ought never to have been a consideration. The furnishings in the room were bare and cheap: a dresser, a small nightstand, a rickety chair—and a single bed of barely average size. If neither of us wished to sleep on the floor, we would have to share a bed. My nerves were absolutely alight with panic, but I could not tell if Mr. Graves were discomforted or not.

We prepared for bed in silence, as it was nearly three o’clock in the morning. Mr. Graves locked all three doors and both windows with a quick “Colloportus!”, and so gave security to a room which lacked even a weak bolt on the door. I could barely keep my eyes open. I did not quite want to get under the covers just yet, and so as Mr. Graves finished changing into his pajamas I sat on the edge of the bed and waited. He was so much better dressed than I was, even to sleep. I had plain, slightly off-white pajamas in fairly cheap cotton, of ordinary cut; Mr. Graves wore blue silk, vertically striped in navy, with a mandarin collar and frog clasps. He was the image of style and manly beauty and I despaired.

“We’ll claim we slept over the bus departure,” Mr. Graves said, looking out the window as he finished fastening the collar of his shirt. “No one will question it.”

“What’s our plan for tomorrow, sir?” I asked as he came around to the other side of the bed and sat down. He looked tired, stress of travel and our nearly twenty-four-hour day telling fiercely upon him.

“Explore Innsmouth,” Mr. Graves said. “I think we should see about the refinery—that’s where the gold comes from, at any rate. See about local lore, if anyone’s got any idea if there’s more of those artifacts than the one we’ve got and the stuff at Miskatonic.”

I glanced at the window, at the strange three o’clock darkness which heralds the time before dawn. They say that this is the witching hour. There is something strange about that time, when sleepers breathe the last of their dreams but the sun has not quite come into the sky. “All right,” I said.

Mr. Graves flicked his wand toward the buzzing, bare electric bulb on the ceiling. Nothing happened; I watched from the corner of my eye as he repeated the motion. A certain dullness came into his face and he closed his eyes, one trembling hand clenched atop the coverlet. The toll of the day must have been heavier than I suspected. He had given his last effort to locking the doors. Without a word, I lifted my own wand and extinguished the light to give what privacy and comfort of darkness I could.

“Thank you,” he said, in a tired voice as we slid beneath the covers.

“Of course, sir,” I replied softly.

We did not speak again that night.

Still, exhausted as I was, I could not think of sleep now. The bed was exceedingly narrow, especially when both of its occupants were men of six feet or more in height, and his shoulders were pressed tightly against mine. I was now intimately acquainted with the way that Mr. Graves breathed and I could barely breathe myself from the revelation. I held my body quite still, so as to avoid forcing him to touch me more than necessary. Surely Mr. Graves thought of this as an ordinary thing, something he had done with other Aurors before, and would be confused and even perhaps disgusted by my overexcited state. I could not bear to ruin the beauty of all the foregoing events of the day that I have described.

After a while I did manage to drift off. Unfortunately, this peaceful state did not last long. I was awakened by a sound that frightened me nearly to death. I opened my eyes, disoriented and confused, to find Mr. Graves making a noise that could only be described as a whimper. He was still lying on his side, facing away from me, but I could hear him with perfect clarity. I waited a moment, wondering if he too would wake, but he did not. Rather, I began to hear words—words that struck me to the core of my being.

“Stop,” he repeated over and over, “no…no…”

With the force of a Stunning Spell, I was struck by the realization that, in his dreams, Mr. Graves must be reliving those horrible days of captivity by Grindelwald. He was shuddering now, tremors racking the form I had always seen as so invulnerable. He did not kick or strike out, as I knew that I did—and, it must be confessed, still do—when nightmares struck. He only trembled in a helpless stillness that threatened to break my heart.

Carefully, I turned over and placed my hand upon his shoulder. “Mr. Graves,” I said, “it’s only a dream. Wake up!”

He did not reply, but it seemed that my touch had done something good. Gradually, his sobs faded, and he fell still again. I did not dare to remove my hand, nor did I desire to. This, along with all he had said throughout the day, was proof that Mr. Graves was a terribly lonely man. I did not know if I could be counted as a friend, but even so I could not allow him to be injured while I was present. The least thing I could do was to remain with him in this dark hour and give him my poor companionship. So I left my hand where it was, and fell back to sleep praying that Mr. Graves would know that he was not alone.

My second awakening was much less uncomfortable. I opened my eyes lazily in the cold dawn light, and that was when I realized that I had taken my unspoken desires as the word of law. My hand was no longer on Mr. Graves’ shoulder, but rested upon his waist; rather than lying side by side in a respectable and platonic manner, I was curled around him, chest to back, nose practically buried in his hair; and, even worse than all the rest, our legs were tangled together.

For a moment, I thought I would be better off simply dying right there and then.

But Mr. Graves was still asleep, and in this I saw my chance. Slowly, I began to extricate myself from him, drawing back with intent to let him continue to sleep. This plan was foiled in an instant, when Mr. Graves followed me, refusing to allow me egress. I was very near hyperventilation. I was trapped. This would surely be the end of me. Mr. Graves would evict me from MACUSA, throw me in the ocean, or, worst of all, look upon me with disgust and disappointment.

My traitorous body enjoyed this scene far too much, reveling in the chance to be so close to him at last. I despaired of myself. Now I can look back upon this and laugh; I am much more confident in the state of his affections lately. But at the time I was betrayed by the relaxation that came from far too much nearness, by the simple human touch which I had so long been denied.

When Mr. Graves awoke, I thought my heart would stop. He reached up to rub his eyes and paused. “…good morning, Credence,” he said softly.

“Good morning,” I replied, nerves jangling so badly I thought I must set myself on fire.

There was the sound of a laugh in his voice. “What a way to wake up.”

“I’m sorry…”

“For what?” It seemed that he said that frequently. I had not thought about how often I must apologize, but it occurred to me that I did.

“For…this.”

Mr. Graves shrugged. I felt the stretch of his muscles where my hand rested, and adored it. “I think this is fine,” he said. He still sounded so weary! “Haven’t slept this well in a long time.”

“Oh.”

“Seems you’re good for me.”

I refrained from saying that the same was true for me; I thought that it was implied, given our current position. “…what time is it?” I finally asked.

“I’ll check my watch,” Mr. Graves said, sarcasm lacing his voice.

I flinched slightly. “I’m sorry,” I said again, unable to prevent the words escaping my lips.

“Credence. Stop apologizing,” Mr. Graves said. The words were stern, but his tone was quite gentle. “You act like you’re sorry for existing.”

Unfortunately, it was true that I was sorry for that. I still struggle against such thoughts, for twenty years of indoctrination left me certain of my own inevitable failure and convinced that I only bring harm to those around me. One of those statements is very likely true, but then again I have seen some great success in my short life.

“Shouldn’t we get up?” I hazarded weakly.

“I’m in no great hurry,” Mr. Graves said. “We’ve already really missed that bus, and if Innsmouth’s stood still as long as I think it has then we’re not missing a lot out there.”

Did this mean, then, that he was comfortable? That somehow my transgression was no transgression at all, but a pardonable action? Moreover, was it welcomed? Hope leapt up into my heart, great and shining, and the next words of Mr. Graves did nothing to extinguish it.

“I think I’d mind more if it was Kaufmann or Smith,” he said thoughtfully. “But it’s you.”

“Me?”

“You’re a very easy person to be around.”

“I am?”

“There’s no one else I’d let this near,” he said.

I sensed that this was absolute honesty on his part. His voice was so terribly tired. I wished for the courage to truly embrace him, for I had the fleeting thought that in this moment of bared weakness Mr. Graves might welcome the act.

The moment was lit with a mundane magic—mundane magics being all the greater, for they are rare despite requiring no special power or incantation. There was faint yellow light seeping in through the window, which faced away from the sunrise, and blanketed the dingy room in a nearly holy glow, as one might imagine a room in distant Carcosa. Lying still as we were, the creak of the bed was unheard; there was not another sound in the whole of the hotel save our quiet breathing. So close to each other, the fishy smell that permeated the whole of Innsmouth was entirely forgotten. Distantly, gulls called.

“Why me, sir?” I asked at last.

There was a smile in his voice. (I see that same smile now, as I raise my head and look across the table. He asks what I am writing, in this tale of woe, that leaves me looking like a lovesick girl: I answer, and he beams.) “Didn’t I answer that yesterday?”

“Not really,” I said honestly. “There were many victims of Grindelwald. Why me?”

There was a pause only as long as half a breath. “Because you’re fascinating to me,” he said. “I didn’t know who the hell you were, first time I saw you. You looked like your last name then—bare bones, and that was pretty much all.”

I laughed, quietly, breathlessly. “I’m sure I did. I’m still not much to look at.”

“You’ve got a bad mirror, in that case,” Mr. Graves said, very nearly teasing. I could not help a wince at the thought of that eerie white shadow in the mirror, but said nothing. “I have to hear every woman in the building going off about you every half-second when I’ve got my back turned.”

“Oh no,” I said, feeling myself turn beet-red.

“And half the men to boot,” he went on.

At that, I fell rather still. That was a difficult thing to hear.

Mr. Graves paused. “I’d heard a few rumors about you and Grindelwald,” he said, with as much delicacy as I’m sure he could muster. I appreciated the effort, but he struggled and continues to struggle with tact. “He makes no great secret of his preferences—but I didn’t know if they were true for you.”

“Oh,” I said softly. All my preceding experiences in such matters were rather horrifying. I did my best, and still do my best, to forget it. Wilde tells us that we should receive the sacrament of love on our knees, and so I had when Grindelwald’s presence had cast an enchantment upon me. At the time I had thought it to be a true sacrament: by this time, I knew better. I had received only the communion of the Devil himself. “They are. I’m…” I did not apologize, but it hung unspoken in the air anyway.

“Nothing wrong with attractions,” Mr. Graves said, a certain sort of gruffness in his voice, and in that instant I knew another of his secrets. He was like me. We were the same, tangled up inside in ways that few enough other people seemed to be. “It’s not such a great scandal in the magical community. We don’t prosecute it, anyway—not quite as barbaric as the No-Majs.”

Relief sank through me. The thought of the risk I ran with my feelings had been a lurking shadow in my mind, and with this new light I found that my only remaining fear was that Mr. Graves, himself, would not appreciate my burgeoning affections. “I didn’t know.”

“There’s a lot you still don’t know.”

“I want to learn it all, though.”

“Do you?”

“This is my world now,” I said, thinking of all the unfamiliar things I had only encountered in the last day. “I want to know everything.”

For a brief, divine moment, his strong hand rested upon mine. “There are some things,” he said, “that no one should ever have to know. I hope you never do.”


	5. Chapter 5

Not long after this, we arose. Neither of us spoke of what had passed between us; there was too much for me to consider, and it was clear that Mr. Graves was already setting his mind to the task ahead of us. He seemed rejuvenated by the prospect of an investigation, laying out plans and counter-plans with alarming speed. I was returned to my secure position only as his follower. I could not have been more relieved by the fall to ordinary life.

We set out from the Gilman House into the brightness of late morning, and sought what early lunch could be had at one of Innsmouth’s few establishments. The food was not particularly delightful, but I had certainly eaten worse, and Mr. Graves seemed to hardly notice a thing. I could not help but notice the suspicious looks given to us by the few other patrons, and could taste fish even in the canned beef stew served to us.

After our repast we stopped first at the office of the Marsh Refining Company, at the eastern extremity of the square from the Gilman House. It was a well-kept building, unlike many of those surrounding it; inside, there was less of a stink of fish, and pleasantly functional electricity. Only one individual occupied the lobby: a young, pretty secretary with dark bobbed hair and nothing to speak of the Innsmouth look.

“Hello,” she said, “how are you gentlemen this morning?”

“Fine, thanks,” Mr. Graves said, with a charming smile. I saw her go a bit weak at the knees and smiled privately. I knew that feeling well. “We’re just looking for information, Miss…?”

“Thompson,” she fluttered, “Janet Thompson.”

He shook her hand, and so did I. He gave our alias as “Farrell”, which I would come to find out later is a name derived from a distantly related branch of the Graves family who did not emigrate when the family initially came across the Atlantic. “We’re not in town long, Miss Thompson,” Mr. Graves explained, leaning his hip comfortably against her desk. As usual, he was the very image of wealthy leisure, an image only belied by the fact that he was quite obviously a man of above-average physical and personal power. “We were stopped in Innsmouth overnight, and my nephew here—” Again with the epithet of nephew! Was I never to be free of it? “—heard some rumors of priceless jewelry held by the Marsh family.”

Janet pursed her lips, emphasizing her lovely Cupid’s bow. “I’ve heard a few myself,” she said in the undertone of a confession. “Just swanky stuff, really, crowns and necklaces and bracelets and all sorts of stuff. Of course I was only hired two months ago. Brian Burnham over at the First National grocery filled me in on all of it—I’ve got a bit of a crush on him. He’s about the only other regular person in this town!”

"Really," Mr. Graves said. "How did you come to be hired here? Seems a bit out of the way for a nice girl like you."

"I was approached by Mr. Marsh when I was still at the agency," Janet said. "He told me it'd be a good job--plenty of leisure time, good job for a girl just getting started on her own. I haven't got much in the way of family, you see, so I just packed right up and came out here! But I'm starting to regret it. This place just _stinks_ of fish, and everyone _stares_ all the time! I hate to walk home alone at night. Mr. Marsh keeps saying there's nothing to worry about, but..."

Poor Janet appeared half out of her mind with nerves simply from living in Innsmouth. “Do you think Mr. Marsh would talk to us?” I asked, hoping that the question was innocent enough not to arouse suspicion.

“He’s not in,” Janet said. There was a deep unhappiness in her voice which alarmed me. “Hasn’t been for _days_ now. Of course nobody ever comes in here—you two are the first two in two and a half weeks! So it isn’t as though Mr. Marsh is looking in on what I’m doing.”

“Do you know where he is? I’d very much like to speak to him on the matter of the antiques,” Mr. Graves pressed.

Janet shook her head and picked at one of her fingernails. “If I knew where he was, I’d just quit the minute I saw him,” she said. “I don’t want to work here anymore.”

“Why not?” I asked. Mr. Graves was rather focused on the case, and I thought somebody had better care about poor Janet.

“It’s creepy,” Janet said with a small shudder. “I keep hearing things at night—I’m staying at a boarding house on the other side of the river and Brian and I are the only ones who live there. And he goes home weekends, so then it’s just me. It sounds like there’s people outside all the time, only when you look you don’t see anything. And I see things when I’m walking home at night, and Mr. Marsh has all kinds of strange people coming and going from the office all hours…I’m going just crazy!”

The poor girl looked near tears. That must have caught Mr. Graves off his guard, for he offered her a hand. “Come on—get up, you look like you need a hug.” For half a second she looked alarmed, and then she leaped to her feet and flung her arms around him, weeping uncontrollably. I felt great sympathy for her. What a thing, to live in terror this way. I knew it well. I also knew how the strength in Mr. Graves’ arms could banish such fears.

“I’m so sorry,” Janet said, dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief. She sniffled. “You must think I’m just so stupid, crying like that.”

“You’re not stupid at all,” Mr. Graves said gently. He helped her back into her chair where she sat looking wrung-out and tragic. “Only very sensitive. Have you thought about quitting?”

Janet nodded. “I just turned in my notice,” she said.

Come to think of it—“It’s Sunday, Miss Thompson,” I said. “Why are you working? I never heard of anywhere that people worked Sundays…”

She turned to me with wide eyes. “They don’t have a six-day work week in Innsmouth,” she said softly. “Nobody goes to church on Sunday, not here. They go on Thursday.”

“Church on Thursday?” Mr. Graves asked, glancing between us. I knew that he was a heathen, so I was sure I would have to explain later why this was a problem.

Janet shook her head. “They don’t go to church.”

“Then where do they go?” I asked, unsettled.

“The Temple of Dagon,” she whispered, and said no more.

Somewhere, in the sudden silence, I could hear water dripping.

We truly could not get her to say another word. She only shook her head, rendered mute by some horror she dared not speak, and would not look at us again. So we went out into the street and loitered upon the corner, considering our further direction.

“I wonder where Marsh has been,” I said.

“I have no idea,” Mr. Graves said. “I remember the name ‘Dagon’ from the records we read at Miskatonic. That Esoteric Order seems like it might be a problem around here.”

Up and down the street I could see not a soul. The back of my neck prickled. “Will we pay a visit to the Temple?”

Mr. Graves looked down toward the waterfront. “Not yet,” he said. “I think we’d better stick with the plan and see that refinery. We’re here for the jewellery.”

“Isn’t there a chance that they’re connected, the Order of Dagon and the tiara?” I asked. For what else could be so connected? Janet’s terror and the malevolent magic laid upon the tiara must be from a similar source. It could not be otherwise! Of course I had no idea at that time how direct the connexion was, and so could not imagine what lay in store for us.

“You said there’s no chance the magic is human,” Mr. Graves pointed out, “and the Order of Dagon is made up of humans. Diseased, creepy humans, but humans all the same. Might be a chance, but there's only two of us. One avenue of investigation at a time.”

I could find no refutation of this point, and so let it lie. I followed Mr. Graves down the road, toward the shore, and toward the refinery.

All around us, Innsmouth seethed with its piscine stench. I wish that I had the ability to describe that place satisfactorily! But this is the best map that I can sketch in words, and it would perhaps be no better in images even if I had a cartographer’s skill. I have no paints, and no way to paint with any skill besides, so my poor words must suffice.

The streets of Innsmouth were a tangled wreck. Chimney-pots, none of them smoking, stood overhead in crooked attitudes like broken fingers stretching skyward. Gambrel roofs sagged; many, indeed, had fallen in entirely. Three tall, Georgian steeples formulated the majority of the skyline. One of these was crumbling apart at its apex; a second had holes punctured in where there might have been clock faces, once upon a time. At the New Church Green, which was only raggedly yellow, there was the pillared former Masonic Hall whose black-and-gold sign, faded impossibly with time and wear, proclaimed that it belonged to the Esoteric Order of Dagon. This must be the temple Janet had mentioned. A squat church in a vaguely Gothic style was the only other building of note here. There was a gorge that broke the town in half, crossed by a horribly rickety iron-railed highway bridge. The Green was to one side of this; the proper town square to the other, and it was on this square that the Gilman House rested.

Inland, the town petered out into soggy and desolate marshland—the same blasted place we had driven through the preceding night, with its broken roads and rusted railway and bare telephone poles—and out the waterfront things were not much better. The decay of the houses grew progressively worse as the shore was approached. Plants grew in empty lots. These were not ordinary plants: they seemed soft and leathery, like kelp; on many of the houses, there were unusual high-water marks, and even collections of barnacles, as if they had been half submerged for quite some time.

Despite the clear decay of the town as we approached the waterfront, I saw more and more people out on the streets. None were of a visibly pleasant demeanor, staring at us with flat and unfriendly eyes in silence as we passed. There were many of about my age, and none older than Mr. Graves. All had the distinct Innsmouth look, to varying degrees of severity. Children looked quite ordinary, except for their lank and unwashed hair; those about my age had strange eyes; any approaching Mr. Graves’ age looked sicker than Joe Sargent.

“I hope this isn’t contagious, whatever plague’s come down here,” Mr. Graves muttered as we passed a small knot of youths sunning themselves on the corner.

“I don’t think it’s a plague, sir,” I said. I glanced at a crew of men carrying a heavy load of fishing gear up the far side of the street. Despite their looks, they were clearly strong and healthy. “I’ve seen the Spanish flu and diphtheria, and it doesn’t look like that.”

Mr. Graves shook his head. “Something’s not right. It’s either a disease or they’re…” He did not say ‘cursed’, but I am sure it is what he meant and it is certainly what I heard.

The refinery was not in operation when we arrived. The structure, built of brick with a white belfry, was the best-preserved building here. The sandy harbor, with its rotting stone breakwater, terminated at one end upon the shattered foundations of a long-gone lighthouse and at the other end where the river poured out past the refinery into the ocean. A few hunched fishermen stood or sat upon the breakwater, at their ease in the sun.

When we turned away toward the refinery, I could feel their eyes upon us.

Despite the generally unsettling air, the day was clear and bright. The refinery, of whitewashed brick, rose up with a squat grandeur that was reminiscent of a much politer society. The doors were barred and there were few windows, so we could not see inside. And there was no sound of machinery, or smell of smoke or other chemicals. The refinery was quite clearly inactive.

“Where is everyone?” Mr. Graves asked aloud, looking up at the building. “I expected Marsh to be here, or some workers, at the very least.”

“Perhaps we should go,” I murmured, looking back toward the fishermen. They were not looking at us, and yet I had thought I heard footsteps upon the shingle, as if someone were coming up from the water to us.

Mr. Graves shook his head. He tapped at the base of the brick wall absently with the tip of his cane. “Something smells in this town and I don’t mean the fish. Put it together, will you? I want to see if I’m thinking straight.”

I swallowed hard—this was not my forte, acting as an investigator, but Mr. Graves had asked, and so I would try. “Innsmouth is small, and people don’t often come in or out. No one wants to stop here, and there are stories of devil worship and worse things. Everyone looks diseased. Instead of good Christian faith there’s the Esoteric Order of Dagon. There’s strange magic in the jewellery that comes out of this factory, jewellery that no one knows where it comes from…”

There was nothing more to say, and so I trailed off. Mr. Graves stared up at the refinery, lost in thought, and I waited on him to speak.

“That’s all I have, too,” he says. “This isn’t a pretty picture we’re painting, but I feel that we haven’t got the half of it. There will be more in the refinery, I’m sure.”

“Of course, sir,” I said. “How will we get inside?”

Mr. Graves shrugged. “Back door.”

There was a back door, on the far side of the refinery, all the way around the building. By the time we reached it, Mr. Graves looked more than a little peaked, and I finally entreated him to sit for a moment on a broken retaining wall and rest.

“Sorry for this,” he said, tapping his leg.

I looked away from my study of the locked door. “There’s nothing to be sorry for, sir,” I said. “You couldn’t have helped it.”

He pressed his lips together and did not speak. I knew his feelings on the matter, and yet I felt compelled to reassure him each time that he disparaged his strength. Mr. Graves was a man with a lion’s heart, truly; I could not imagine better.

For a while we stood in the shade of the refinery. The gulls called overhead. I watched the sea, wishing to give Mr. Graves some small privacy. It was flat, out to the breakwater; beyond, I could see the rough Atlantic, and far out the black line of what must be Devil’s Reef. The sun glimmered upon the water in silver radiance, reflected upon the gentle waves of the harbor. The river, off to our side, spilled out into the sea, the water meeting strangely in two different colors, deep clear green of the river rushing against the gunmetal of the sea in white-capped waves. It was a rare sight.

At last Mr. Graves rose to his feet. “Credence,” he said briskly, “you know the Unlocking Charm?”

“No, sir,” I said, shame-faced.

“The incantation is Alohomora,” he said. He gestured to the locked door, a faint tremor in his hand. “Would you mind demonstrating if you can pick this up quickly?”

Instantly I understood. He needed to save face, for at the moment any attempt to cast even this simple spell would fail. “Of course not, sir,” I said. I touched my wand to the great padlock, fixed my will, and said, “Alohomora!” The lock clanked free of its hold; I pulled the padlock free and dropped it carelessly upon the ground.

Mr. Graves clapped me on the shoulder. “Well done,” he said. “You’ve got a real aptitude.”

“Thank you,” I said, blushing inanely.

He stepped past me to open the door. It did not creak, which seemed eerie, for I had expected the rusted thing to scream like the damned. Beyond was only darkness, and the smell of metal and salt and the worst stink of fish I had yet encountered. I could hear nothing, and yet the absence itself seemed to be a sound.

“That,” Mr. Graves said after a moment, “is foul. Something is rotten in the town of Innsmouth. And we need a light. Mind leading the way?”

Trembling a bit, for I could not deny that I was nervous of that gaping maw, I stepped forward and cast a lighting charm. It did little to dispel the shadows, illuminating only a bare and empty concrete floor stretching out before us. I had to ignore it. So, with Mr. Graves at my back, I walked into the refinery.


	6. Chapter 6

The air in the refinery was slimy. There is no better way to describe it. When I breathed it coated my tongue and throat, and I coughed a few times as I’d swallowed seawater. The floor was damp, slippery, spongy under my feet. Silent cyclopean machinery, purpose utterly unknowable to me, rose up around us as we crossed the bare floor. Flecks of rust fell, drifting to settle around us, upon our shoulders, a tarnished snowfall. Faint light shone through gaps up near the ceiling of the great room, filtering down without doing a thing to illuminate the place, and I could not help but feel that we were underwater.

“We’ll want to find the office,” Mr. Graves said softly, the sound of his voice echoing up in the vast space. “That’s where anything important will be.”

“It will be near the front door,” I said.

Mr. Graves gestured about us at the great darkness, voice laced with sarcasm. “Be my guest on figuring out where that is.”

I ducked by head and turned red. It was so obvious, and I could scarcely believe my stupidity. His esteem was a fragile thing. “I’m sorry, sir.”

His hands landed upon my shoulders and I jerked, looking up at him in surprised fear. He was looking at me earnestly, face shadowed and weathered in the dim wandlight. “Credence. I forgive you, but there’s no need for apologies. I know…I should be careful how I say things with you.”

“You don’t have to do that,” I said.

“No. I do,” he said. His tone, though quite gentle, brooked no argument.

We passed across the vast atrium in silence. The sound of our footsteps was muted as though we walked on wet sand. My wandlight illuminated little but those faint shadows overhead and about us of the machinery that I had no way of understanding, no matter how I tried. I listened keenly for sounds, for any sign of hidden watchers or of things moving in the dark. And yet I heard nothing but our footsteps. We were utterly alone, and somehow that was more unsettling than the idea that we were not.

At the far side of the refinery, near to the doors, we found the office door. It was a strange little cubicle, out of place on the bare concrete platform. We had passed out from under the machinery: before us there was the front door, and a great double door through which presumably the raw materials entered the refinery. To our right, past the office, was the place where refined ores would be dumped into the trucks; to the other side, lost in the darkness, was the rest of it all, the inscrutable works that produced value from stone by the magic of ordinary science.

The office door was not locked, and the electric light was powered. We shut the door behind us, in the unspoken idea that perhaps there were observers out in the dark after all. Mr. Graves went immediately to the desk and began to search through it, while I opened cabinets, pulled out drawers, and hunted for jewellery. I found a few pieces—useless unenchanted trinkets, not half the workmanship of the tiara now held by MACUSA, but enough to prove that the gold of the jewellery was refined here.

“Here,” Mr. Graves said suddenly, heaving a large book up onto the desk, “this is something!”

I turned from my task and joined him at the desk. “A mill log?”

“No, definitely not,” Mr. Graves said. He frowned as he turned the pages, scanning. “Nor bookkeeping. Look at this…”

Sweeping curves of strange figures arced across the page, in a sulfurous green ink. I could read none of them, except where on occasion writings in copperplate human handwriting interrupted the designs of green. It might have been an illustrated manuscript, the mere phantasy of some idle brain, but something about the intention of the strange symbols told me that these were deliberate, some system of language which I could not at first glance comprehend. The color of the green vibrated at the edges, nauseating and fascinating in perfect unison. And there was another aspect to it, something that teased the edge of my mind where strange dreams lurked.

“Why would they leave a book like this here?” I murmured, tracing the path of one strange sigil with the tip of a finger.

“It’s got to be that cult,” Mr. Graves said. He was deep in thought, staring at the page. “It is all tangled up, then. The metal of the jewellery is processed here and taken…where?”

I stared, transfixed, at the letters before me. They were taking shape into letters—unfamiliar letters, but legible. “Mr. Graves…I think I can read this,” I said.

He looked at me. “You can?”

“Yes,” I said, my hands trembling.

There was a long moment of silence. The ink on the pages seemed to beckon me. There was not a sound but the heaviness of my own breathing, and the faintest of dripping sounds, like a broken tap.

“Go on, then,” Mr. Graves said at last. He picked up the book from the desk and gave it to me.

In my hands, the book was heavy. My mouth was dry as syllables of speech slipped off my tongue as though I were a native speaker, meant to speak this language.

“Dagon wgah'n y’bthnk,” I began. Shadows curled about the room, the electric light flickering, as I spoke. “Cvulgtlagln llll nglui shagg’cai chtenff’fhtagn!”

“Credence!” Mr. Graves warned. His voice came as if from very far away.

I paid him no heed, the chant rolling from me without a meter that could be found, calling to mind the strange and palpitating rhythm of a dying heart. “Hupadgh’shuggnyth cvulgtlagln gnaiih Dagon Hydra’fhalma!”

The shadows were rising, the light fading and failing. There was a crack as if the light fixture had broken and the wall shook. I could hear a deep call, a bell ringing in the deep, a call that pulled at me and repulsed me in equal measure. Mr. Graves was shouting, but I could not have stopped if I desired to do so.

My voice rose in a wail echoed by a hundred screaming voices, the Obscurus taking its deathly shape around me, called forth by these terrible words. My hands were thin and pale, losing the shape of fingers as if they were streaks of white paint. “ _Iä! Iä! Dagon! Hydra! Iä! Iä! Fhtagn, Cthulhu, fhtagn!_ ”

And the book was struck from my hands. Mr. Graves was before me, the book hurled to the floor with a slam. I flinched—and in that moment the shadows were gone. I staggered, grasping at the air. Mr. Graves caught me. “What was that?” he demanded, kicking the book away. “What the hell was that!?”

“Dagon, take our bodies,” I whispered, licking dry lips. I clutched at Mr. Graves’ coat and he seemed content to let me, his strong arm around my shoulders preventing me from collapse. “We pray to you, at the threshold of the realm of dreams we call you. The Brotherhood waits, servants born of Earth. We pray to you, Father Dagon and Mother Hydra. Amen! Amen! Dagon! Hydra! Amen! Amen! We pray, Cthulhu, we pray to you!”

“Merlin’s Beard,” Mr. Graves said. “I shouldn’t have let you touch that book. Are you all right?”

I shook my head, unable to speak, and like a small child I hid my face in the crook of his neck. He held me with both arms, then, an embrace that nearly banished my fear.

At that time, neither of us thought to ask the obvious question. How was I able to read that language, to know it and to translate it into English, when to Mr. Graves it was merely abstract art at best? Now I know the answer.

In the sudden silence of the office, there was a sort of peace. My mouth ached, and my hands burned as if scalded. The book, innocuous, lay discarded upon the floor; neither of us were much inclined to retrieve it. The light was still flickering, the faint and irregular sizzle of electricity making my heart seize again and again.

Distantly, I could still hear that dripping sound.

“We’d better go,” Mr. Graves said. “I think we’ve found plenty of evidence to say that the Order of Dagon is involved in whatever’s going on. And if that book took you like the tiara did—”

“It’s the same magic,” I said. I could not rid myself of the sludgy taste and fleshy texture of the words, the way they’d writhed around my tongue. “It…calls to me.”

Mr. Graves looked at me with deep concern. “We need to leave now.” I bent to pick up the book, but he stopped me. “No. Leave that. Don’t touch it.” He himself took the book and placed it back into its drawer, shutting that firmly.

I obeyed him, and let him pull me toward the door. There was only one thing that gave me pause on our way—“Mr. Graves. The calendar.”

He glanced at it where it hung beside the door, out of the immediate view we had upon entering the room. “What is it?”

With a shaking hand, I pointed. “October thirty-first. It’s marked.” And indeed it was, a plain black “X” which denoted some kind of significance to the date.

Mr. Graves shook his head. “…let’s keep that in mind for when we aren’t in this refinery anymore.”

Crossing that interminable way to the back door was torturous. There were sounds in the dark now, I was convinced: the slick, slithery slimings of unknown observers.

My hair stood on end and I looked frantically about us for the sources of the sounds. They were deliberate, slow, like things crawling at the bottom of the sea might sound. I thought that there were shadows, moving at the edge of our light, and at every turn I anticipated that something would burst into our light and kill us where we stood.

Yet nothing happened. I could not have said if the sounds were even there or not, for Mr. Graves paid them no heed if they did exist. We staggered out into the sunlight together, Mr. Graves shutting the door firmly behind us. He hooked the padlock back into the door and at his command I repaired it, locking it as though we had never been there.

“As far as anyone in this town is concerned, we never came into this building,” Mr. Graves said as we walked up the beach toward the slouching silhouette of the town.

I nodded. All had been set to rights before we had departed, and I was certain that no one would think that we could possibly enter such a locked building. Still, I could not help but notice that the fishermen who had been out upon the breakwater were now gone. That could be explained, however, by the lateness of the hour: the sun was setting now in the West, sinking red behind the shadow of Innsmouth. We had been in the refinery for far longer than I had realized.

We took a brief dinner at the restaurant. It was similarly unassuming and fishy, but I was beginning to pay the piscine atmosphere less and less heed. The woman at the counter, greasy and pale as a halibut, watched us with sliding eyes. I kept my head down, and did not speak.

After this repast, which did nothing to settle the nausea threatening to overtake me, we began our return to the Gilman House. We were, however, stopped by a familiar face.

“Miss Thompson?” Mr. Graves said, raising his brows in alarm as she rushed up to us and slid to a halt on the damp cobblestones.

“I thought—I thought I ought to warn you,” she gasped. Her hat was askew and her eyes were wild, lit by fear and loathing.

“Warn us of what?” he asked.

Janet shook her head. “You must leave,” she said. “Tonight. I’m going to walk, if I have to—we must get out of Innsmouth!”

“Why?” Mr. Graves pulled us off to the side, out of immediate sight of the square.

“I was in the back of the office when I heard some men come in to the front,” she said. “I don’t know why but I hid—I locked myself in the storeroom, only Mr. Marsh and I have keys—and I listened to them talking. They were telling each other about strangers in Innsmouth, and the holy day tomorrow when the whole town will sail out to Devil’s Reef to pay tribute to Dagon!”

Her face was chalk-white, utterly bloodless; in her face her eyes stood out dark and wild. I took her hand in mine, unable to offer words (for I was sure that my face resembled hers), and thinking that perhaps the touch of a friendly hand might help her. Mr. Graves was scowling like a thundercloud. “What else did they say?”

“I almost fainted,” Janet whispered. “They were talking about—I don’t know, I can’t recall—”

“That’s enough,” I said, in a shaking voice, before she could faint. I fumbled in my pocket and pulled out change. “I think this is enough—for a fare to Arkham, at least.”

She clutched at the coins, eyes watering. “The bus leaves soon,” she said. “Won’t you—won’t you come too?”

Mr. Graves shook his head. “We have business here that can’t wait for the Order of Dagon to have its holiday,” he said.

Janet sniffled and wiped her nose. “Please be careful,” she said, looking up at us plaintively. And then she turned and ran, shoes clattering on the pavement, turning the corner of the alley and going out of sight. We watched the dim end of the alley for a moment, considering.

And then Mr. Graves turned to me. “I think we’d better go on inside,” he said. “Tomorrow will be interesting.”

The clerk was not at the desk when we entered the Gilman House. Neither of us paid any mind, only climbed the stairs to our floor and re-entered our room. We took off our coats and suit jackets and set them aside, now happily out of the October chill. I sat down upon the bed, rubbing my eyes, while Mr. Graves set his cane aside. He went and stood by the window, looking out at the deepening darkness.

“What are you thinking, sir?” I asked, daring to break the quiet.

“I’m trying to understand what’s happening here.”

I watched him, looking at the clean curve of his back, cast in yellow light and framed against the blackness beyond, wishing that I dared to rise and embrace him as I had the night before. “Don’t we have enough to prove that a major investigation is warranted?”

Mr. Graves shook his head. “Barely. We need incontrovertible evidence that something bigger than a minor No-Maj cult is involved.”

“What sort of proof haven’t we got?”

“Let me review what we know. Innsmouth is a town that doesn’t like strangers,” Mr. Graves said. “The Esoteric Order of Dagon has replaced religion and brotherhood here. Everyone is afflicted by some kind of curse that leaves them looking diseased and inhuman. In the refinery, there’s writing that suggests some kind of active cult whose magic mirrors the stuff you found in that tiara. And that cult has a holy day, tomorrow, out on Devil’s Reef, where they’ll pay tribute to Dagon.”

“Yes,” I said softly.

“The only mystery left is where that magic came from, and what created it.” Abruptly, Mr. Graves turned to me. “You were a religious boy. What do you know about cults?”

I considered. Of course there was my mother’s hysteria, which had accused Mormons, Jews, Roman Catholics, film stars, flappers, Spiritualists, Methodists, Italians, and Harry Houdini of being influenced by the Devil, which was all utter nonsense. But there were other stories, truer stories, ones which I could not so easily shake away.

“There was the murder of Macario Timon, in early nineteen twenty-six,” I said slowly, attempting to recall the details. “Oakland, California, I think. They found occult books and manuscripts written in blood, all with prayers quite similar to those we read in the Marsh book at the refinery. He was killed as a sacrifice to Lucifer, they thought.”

“I do remember that,” Mr. Graves said. “It was an item of concern because it turned eyes to magic for a little while, but nothing came of it. Go on.”

“There’s…sir, there’s always Aleister Crowley…”

Mr. Graves winced. I shared the sentiment. The stories of Crowley’s depravity were very nearly legendary, from drugs to sexual magic to brutal animal sacrifice, the drinking of unwillingly-given blood, and worse. Everyone knew about him. “I see your point.”

“And I’m sure there are others. There have been plenty of murders, and they say that Hollywood is full of occultists,” I said. I shrugged. “Some of the wilder tales have to be true.”

“So in your opinion,” Mr. Graves said, “are we dealing with something standard here?”

I thought about it. “The one thing that all these cults have in common is that they never actually do anything,” I said. “I mean, they don’t summon anything. They don’t gain powers, or become changed, or receive gifts. And in Innsmouth…”

“…they do.”

There was a moment of silence. The lightbulb hummed. Below the window, there was the sound of faint footsteps; all was quiet again after that.

“And you’re sure that magic you felt isn’t ordinary.”

My hands clenched into fists upon the bedsheets. “It isn’t human,” I whispered. “It can’t be human, not…that. None of it.”

“Are you sure?” Mr. Graves asked. “It calls to you, and you’re human.”

I shook my head. I did not mention my doubt that I was human, the way that I seemed sometimes to be paint smeared across a canvas. “I’ve seen human magic. And none of it is like this. None.”

He crossed the room and sat down beside me. “Then we have to find out what it is,” he said, his voice full of a forced lightness. “Or this will get chalked up to hysteria from a boy and a shell-shocked soldier half out of his mind.”

“Sir…”

“There’s no use denying it,” Mr. Graves said.

“There is every use,” I said, looking sideways at him.

“It’s not an aspersion on my own character,” Mr. Graves said. He stared at the far wall. “I’ve worked with shell-shocked men before, I know what it is. You can’t control it. And you can’t control how other people treat you because of it.”

“They’re wrong about you. If anything, they’ll think of it as hysteria from a boy gone mad.”

Mr. Graves shrugged. “They’re wrong about you, too,” he said. “You’re damn near the sanest person I’ve ever met.”

Then he dropped one hand to rest it on mine. Our hands were very nearly the same size. My fingers were a little longer and slimmer—piano-player’s hands, Queenie had called them once—and his hand was broader than mine, a hand that ought to have held a sword instead of a wand. I spread my hand so that his fingers slotted between mine, though my hand was still palm-down on the bed. He curled his fingers, so that he was almost truly holding my hand. My heart palpitated.

“I spoke in tongues today, sir,” I said. “Madness is putting it a little mildly.”

He squeezed my hand a little, and did not speak. I looked down at the floor and thought of the day, of all that had happened and what would happen tomorrow, and found myself so tired that I could barely think.

And then Mr. Graves let go of my hand. I thought for a moment that all was lost, but then—miracle of miracles—he set his arm around my shoulders and drew me close.

I leaned against him and felt as though I were a piece of a puzzle finally falling into place. I turned my head and rested it upon his shoulder. And he did not push me away.

This could have been only a simple embrace of friendship.

It was not.

“Tell me,” he said fiercely, suddenly, “if this is wrong.”

The great god laughed, blind eyes yawning, and my heart lurched in my chest. I looked up at him, half-minded to ask what he meant, and his fingertips caught beneath my chin, holding me in place. Our eyes met, and in his I saw a fearful desire which must have been reflected in mine.

He kissed me.

I was _ecstatic_.

All of his actions—the yearning looks, the gifts, the kindnesses—came to sudden explanation. As much as I had been fascinated by him he had been fascinated by me. And now, here, on the eve of something beyond our comprehension, we had found each other.

No more words were exchanged that night. Still, I was timid and he was careful, and so nothing less innocent than a deep kiss passed between us. We did not bother to remove our clothes or even our shoes. It did not matter. The touch of his hand upon my face, or even simply a glance—these things were infinitely beautiful, setting my nerves alight.

We fell asleep this way, intentionally wrapped in each other’s arms. I had never felt safer in my twenty-one years of life, and thought that I never would. Mr. Graves seemed to have no fear that night, and the darkness did not weigh upon him.

But this was not to last.


	7. Chapter 7

At midnight I awoke with a start, and in an instant Mr. Graves’ hand clamped down upon my arm. “Quiet,” he breathed.

For a moment, I was utterly disoriented, but I trusted him enough to remain silent and simply listen. At first I thought that there was nothing at all—but then I realized that there was a faint movement outside the door, a faint sound of creaking floorboards, a susurrus of speech. “Who?” I whispered.

“Marsh,” Mr. Graves replied, barely audible. Somehow it was known we had been to the refinery, and therefore known that we were connecting the pieces of the mystery of Innsmouth.

It was obvious that Mr. Graves was uncertain of our next move—and I had to agree. We were neither of us great combatants at the present moment, with my inexperience and his trouble with casting spells, so there was little chance of simply fighting our way out with magic. And we were certainly too outnumbered for fists.

“Get up quietly,” Mr. Graves finally breathed. “We'll go out the window.”

Careful, moving by half-inches, we slid out of the bed. I was shivering with fear in the not-quite-dead silence of that room. I slipped into my jacket and he did the same. We picked our way across the floor toward the window and our freedom. Outside the door, there was only the faintest and stealthiest of sound.

And then I heard a terrible thing: one of the doors in an adjoining room groaned as it opened. I froze in place and Mr. Graves stopped still. We had no light: only the faintest light of the moon. All I could see was his shadow. He turned and pointed at the window; I hurried to obey.

With shaking fingers I worked at the latch: it would not give. It would not give! I could hear sounds outside the door now: gurgling voices that spoke in a language strange to my ears, the slick splash of fish falling from a net. And then Mr. Graves was beside me. He tapped the latch with his wand. I saw the sparks of a spell, but then—it failed. “Damn,” he hissed. His hand was shaking so that he could hardly hold his wand. “Damn, damn, damn. Not now.”

I took out my wand and tried to unlock the window, but though I knew the spell, in this moment of fear I could not fix my will firmly enough upon it. The lock did not open.

The door in the other adjoining room groaned and I heard slow footsteps there. We were now surrounded on both sides. I glanced over my shoulder and saw shadows shifting in the faint light coming in under the door from the hallway. Shadows that had no human form. “Mr. Graves,” I pleaded.

He looked at me and shook his head. He could do nothing. He turned his back to the window, raising his wand and aiming it at the door, in a perhaps futile attempt at defense.

One final time, I bent my head to labor at the latch. I struggled, cutting one of my fingers on a piece of metal, listening to the ever-growing noise that surrounded us, desperate now to break out into the safety of a forty-foot drop offered by the window, and then—something tapped upon the window.

Tap.

Tap.

I fell still, not daring to look up. It was as though all sound had been extinguished but that awful noise, just above my head.

Tap.

Tap.

“Credence,” Mr. Graves whispered. “Is that you?”

Slowly, I raised my head. What I saw before me—the image is forever burned into my mind.

It was not so exceptional, on its own: it had a visage like a Grindylow, a flat fishlike face and a mouth of teeth so long and sharp the mouth would barely close, eyes black and oily and bulging out from its head. It was bipedal, crouched like a parody of a frog, a mockery of human shape. On the neck there were gills, opening and closing; its clawed hands and feet were long and webbed. Fins drooped from its back and sides, dragging wetly over the edge of the narrow balcony outside the window. The belly was white and the skin, heavily scaled, was gray-green in the light of the window.

And yet this was not so terrible. No, the horror was in this: the thing at the window was tapping with one claw upon the glass. It looked down upon me, and when its eyes met mine its mouth stretched out in a horrible, malevolent smile, and it waved, as if in greeting.

I cried out and lurched back from the window. The thing let out a howling croak and outside of our room there was an answering chorus.

“Down!” Mr. Graves thundered. I looked at him and his eyes flashed with power. I tasted his magic before he cast his spell and I hurled myself to floor. Over my head, Mr. Graves aimed his wand at the glass. “ _Bombarda_!”

A shockwave of force struck the wall and it blew outward. The thing on the windowsill was hurled away, and before I could think Mr. Graves had me up by the hand and was hurling us both out into empty space. We plunged toward the pavement, grasping at nothing, and it was only on accident that I managed to cast a Cushioning Charm to catch our fall. Overhead there was a wailing, croaking clamor, and around us the sound of many footsteps.

“Run! _Run_!” Mr. Graves shouted, and I was on my feet in an instant. He caught my hand and we ran, side by side, through the blind streets of Innsmouth.

The looming houses closed over us on both sides. Behind us there was the sound of pursuit, of men’s shouts and of vile croaking. No dogs—only those _things_ , like the thing on the windowsill. I chanced a look up, and realized I should not have done it. There were things leaping from rooftop to rooftop, after us, agile and furious.

We broke from the streets and out into the square in front of the Gilman House. Mr. Graves showed no signs of stopping, running like a man possessed toward the bridge that would carry us to the other side of the river. I followed, not daring to look back.

The bridge clattered under our feet. The metal was slick and I slipped, nearly falling, caught only by my death-grip on Mr. Graves’ hand.

We came off the bridge onto New Church Green. The Temple of Dagon was ablaze with light and our shadows danced upon the grass. I did not know where we were going, but Mr. Graves was clearly certain. Behind us, the clamor continued: apparently we had made just enough headway that our true location was uncertain. It was more fearful to hear the hunting cry go up all around as people searched for us than it was to hear the whole army united behind us.

My side ached and my vision spun, but Mr. Graves kept pulling me along. We ducked into an alley and he pulled me down, into a place where the foundation of a building had crumbled and there was a gap. We were crowded together side by side, but out of immediate view and out of the streetlights.

I panted, struggling for air, and Mr. Graves was breathing heavily. In the tiny gap, there was no space to move, and I could see the way his face twisted in pain. His leg—he must be in agony. But he made no noise, only watched the alley, looking toward the street beyond.

The tramp of heavy, booted feet made me flinch and I pressed back against the slimy brickwork in which we hid. On the street, two men with flashlights went by.

At the mouth of the alley they paused and I closed my eyes, terrified.

“Anything?” one of them said.

“Too many holes in this place to count,” the other grumbled. “But they’ll have to show themselves soon enough.”

“You’ve got your boat ready, for tomorrow?”

“Been waiting all year to use it.”

They continued to talk, remarkably banal conversation, as they went away. I relaxed minutely and I felt Mr. Graves do the same. “Ah, _damn_ ,” he said in a near-whisper. “That…”

“We should leave Innsmouth,” I breathed, leaning against him. “We’ve seen them. They aren’t human, Mr. Graves, they…”

“We don’t know what they are, Credence,” he said. I heard him swallow and felt him shudder. There was a rustling in the darkness as he shifted, trying to make his leg comfortable. “Only that they are, and…”

He was cut off by the sound of more footsteps.

“…about the Thompson girl,” a woman’s voice creaked.  

“Ayuh,” someone grunted.

“Still, it’ll all be over tomorrow,” an earnest young voice piped up.

There was a general round of assenting noises. “This’s your first time on the reef, ain’t it?”

“It is!” the young voice said.

“You’ll see such things tomorrow night as can’t be believed, young Henry.”

“Such beautiful things…”

“Perhaps some will go down to Y’ha-nthlei tomorrow night.”

“Ayuh, I hear old Marsh is ready to take his turn.”

“Blessed man.”

Another voice raised itself: “Iä Dagon!” The chorus ran around the circle, and the group moved off to continue elsewhere.

Silence settled over our hideaway.

The howling, croaking chorus of organized pursuit had greatly died down. I felt as though I could breathe, if only for a moment. We had lived. We had survived the pursuit.

“We have to get out to that reef,” Mr. Graves said.

I twisted to look at him. In the dull, malevolent red light of the streetlamps, filtered from the mouth of the alley, I could just see the unhealthy pallor of his face and the way his hands shook. “We have enough proof…”

“You should go, get back to MACUSA and tell them to send more help,” Mr. Graves said. He stared across the alley, and the crumbling brick across from us, looking as if he were not here at all. “But I…Credence, I can’t walk away from this.”

His breathing was harsh in the silence, hurt in so many ways that I could barely even comprehend them all. My heart twisted with pain for him. I took his cold hand in mine. “I won’t leave you,” I said.

Mr. Graves looked at me and somehow managed a half-smile, the warmth real and genuine despite his exhaustion. “Of course you won’t, you stubborn idiot…”

“I’m the albatross around your neck,” I said softly. “I couldn’t go if I tried.”

We determined that our best course of action was to get out of Innsmouth and find shelter for the night, away from an immediate area of search. I have never experienced such a harrowing journey in my life. Mr. Graves, his injury made worse by our flight from the Gilman House, needed to lean upon me; we could not move faster than he could walk.

In those dark and tangled streets, echoing with distant barks and croaks, we took every step with caution. We avoided the lit streets, slipping instead through dark alleys and unfenced yards. We were going north, toward the upper half of Innsmouth, rather than doubling back toward the bridge and the Gilman House. The bridge would be too exposed; under cover of the darkness we had a chance.

Mr. Graves could not manage to cast a Disillusionment Charm and, untrained, neither could I. I had to check every corner before we turned it, and often we had to stop and wait as footsteps passed. We never saw any of the creatures, only the shadows of humans, but we could often enough hear the scratching and scraping as they crawled along the rooftops.

As we moved I came to hate silence, for at least when there was motion we knew where our pursuers might be. When it was silent, my neck prickled with terror that we had been found and our enemies were waiting for the moment to strike. We could not even move, for fear that our steps might be heard in the silence.

We waited at the mouth of every alley until we were sure that anyone had passed before dragging ourselves across into the mouth of the next. At every turn we were fearful of discovery. For ten minutes, we lay flat on our faces beneath a bush in a garden while two men with guns made idle conversation not five feet away. I could barely breathe from terror, and Mr. Graves seemed to stay on his feet only by pure determination.

Slowly, we made our way out of Innsmouth and onto its north shore. We moved away from the dunes, grateful for the lack of light, and finally came to rest in an overgrown ditch, out of sight of any path and veiled from light. All sounds of pursuit were behind us; down this long-dry channel, not too far away, the surf pounded the beach. For the moment, we seemed to truly be out of danger.

I helped Mr. Graves to lie down. When I tried to pull off my jacket, for him to use as some sort of pillow, he stopped me with a hand on my arm and a shake of his head. “Your shirt’s white,” he rasped. “It’ll stand out…”

He leaned against me, his head upon my shoulder, as I reclined next to him. Now that we were no longer running for our lives, I shivered as my sweat dried and the chill of the October night slid its fingers over my skin. Out in the dark, things called and cried out, and I closed my eyes tightly as if I might prevent them from finding us by refusing to see them.


	8. Chapter 8

The watery sun woke us the next morning, shortly after seven o’clock. Tired as we were and hungry as we were, we rose anyway. Mr. Graves, somewhat recovered from the previous night, managed to conjure food which he explained came from the shelves at the First National grocery in Innsmouth.

“Gamp’s Elemental Laws of Transfiguration,” Mr. Graves explained. “Can’t create food from nothing, but if you know where it is…” It was only bread and cheese, but considering the energy we’d expended the night previously it wasn’t long before all of it was gone. By eight o’clock we were finished with our meal and walking down to the shoreline.

“How will we get to Devil’s Reef?” I asked.

“Swimming,” Mr. Graves said grimly.

“I can’t swim,” I said nervously, watching the waves crashing upon the stony beach.

“You can if you can breathe underwater,” Mr. Graves said. He rested the tip of his wand at the base of his throat and murmured, “Respiraro.” And then he repeated the process on me.

Whatever magic he had used caused my lungs to feel twice their natural size and I was suddenly energized by a rush of oxygen. “What—”

“It’ll let you breathe underwater,” Mr. Graves said. “Touchy spell, but useful, when you’re dealing with bad air or water.”

I touched my throat. “Breathe—underwater?”

“Follow me,” Mr. Graves said in answer. He turned and waded into the surf, battered by the waves, but pushing through them until he could dive under the water.

Slowly, terrified, I followed him. I could not see Mr. Graves anymore, and I could only pray that he had not already drowned. Rocked by the waves, I stared out at the horizon. Out to Devil’s Reef, where we would meet fearful things.

I dived beneath the waves and, forcing down my fear, took a breath. Witches, it is said, cannot drown. Today, I had discovered why.

It was no different than breathing air.

My eyes stung for a moment upon opening; I was not used to the saline water. The world before me was blurry, shadows and shifting lines of light that rippled as the surface moved. I saw Mr. Graves before me; he gestured, as if to ask if I were well, and when I waved an affirmative he kicked off and began to swim strongly into the ocean.

And oh, what a marvel! I had never learned to swim, for it is only witches who cannot drown, but by floundering and struggling I was able to move. Untrained, with only the example of Mr. Graves to follow, I found myself very soon swimming like a seal. Half the trouble of drowning is a trouble of air, and when that is overcome, swimming is easier and more natural than breathing! We came from the sea, long ago, or so the No-Maj scientists tell us, and I am inclined to believe them when I think of the grace of my motion through the waves.

That is, perhaps, unnerving, when all that followed is taken into account, but this is a memory I prefer not to tarnish.

We had begun our journey in the shallow waters beneath the breakwater at the lighthouse, and I was enthralled with the sights before me. The water was green and murky, but could not hide the forest of broken piers and sunken docks through which we swam. Mr. Graves was no more than a silhouette now, but the fish that flashed through the water by us were so clear in their torpedo outlines as to be immediately distinguishable. I could not stop to observe them, though I desired to do so.

As we descended into the deeper waters, the sunlight was still strong and clear. I could see the mossy outlines of the piers, and make out the waving gaudy sea-grass in brilliant green and purplish-red on the sea bottom below. Fat slick algae brushed my hands in waving streamers. I saw no sea stars, but plenty of crabs, scuttling shadows with long claws, just the same as the ones we had eaten mere days ago in Arkham. Anemonae crouched on banks of rotting wood from sunken ships, and once I saw a rookery of seals sleeking past.

But then the bottom below us dropped away into darkness, and for the first time since entering the water I was afraid. This was where the Innsmouth folk believed in creatures of the deep, alien things that would rise to us with claws and teeth open for a deathly embrace. I very nearly turned back then: but Mr. Graves had not ceased to swim, and Devil’s Reef was still further yet. So I swam on, trusting in him not to lead me into danger so terrible we could not get out of it.

Out over the dark water we swam. Things moved below us, but I could not do anything but swim on, ignoring the shine of hungry eyes from below. The currents battered us, and I saw Mr. Graves struggling more than once to keep a straight course. But he managed it.

The reef rose up suddenly out of the water to us. The current smashed us both against the rocks and bones of coral. I caught myself and scraped my hands raw scrambling up, Mr. Graves could not climb up himself. He struggled out of the water with my help and, exhausted, we clung to each other on the rock of the reef.

I could see the skeletons of birds littering the rock, spars of polished wood caught in the jagged stone. The reef was enormous, a bulwark of dead corals and rock, forced up out of the water by some unknowable force. Ledges and pathways crisscrossed the whole of it, and caves sank into its face.

Over the crash of waves and the sound of screeching gulls, there was another sound. Wind raged over the reef, the gray clouds overhead swirling; on that wind, there was a strange and musical piping.

“Up there!” Mr. Graves called, over the cacophonous noise, pointing at a cave. I nodded and began to help him up the irregular path toward the opening.

We fell into the cave more than stepped. There was a lip on the opening, invisible from the outside, dropping about three feet into the cave itself, which sloped sharply downward. It was wet and rough, the ceiling ribbed like the roof of a mouth. The tunnel, barely big enough for a man to stand upright, aimed sharply downward. The dull gray sea-light from outside the tunnel slid down and faded into absolute blackness.

The sound of the surf echoed around us, and I could barely hear anything. Mr. Graves pointed, and I understood. We began our descent into the darkness beneath Devil’s Reef.

Like a spiral staircase, the tunnel curved in its descent. I was forced to light my wand, for Mr. Graves—after the charms that had allowed us to breathe underwater and the swim out to the reef—could barely manage to climb, let alone cast a Lumos. So I did. Occasionally we passed junctures, tunnels branching off and leading parallel or back up to the surface, and sometimes tunnels that opened from the roof. On some instinct, however, we never turned from our clear path.

The sounds of the surf and wind and gulls were now far away and so faint as to be utterly insignificant. Yet that piping, that strange and distant cry, remained. It grew no nearer, but no less clear.

“How deep does this go?” I ventured, after perhaps half an hour of difficult slide and scramble over the tunnel. There were no broken rocks, no crumbling slopes, but the surfaces were slick and slimy, sticky to the touch. When we rested for a moment on a level surface, standing proved difficult as the slime on the rocks had begun to adhere to our skins.

“I don’t know,” Mr. Graves said.

Our voices, though soft, echoed in the tunnels, and we did not speak again. We both knew that stealth and secrecy was of the utmost importance, even if I suspected that our presence in the reef was already known.

At last we reached the bottom of that long vertical slide. Here the tunnels widened, plainly meant for actual use rather than for simple climbing. Four or five men could have walked abreast, and the ceilings were slightly higher than the average. Unlike the tunnel from which we had just emerged, the floor was smooth and easy to walk upon. The ceiling was worked into a bell arch, the apex of the arch running along the center of the tunnel all the way to where it disappeared into darkness.

Despite the clear signs of habitation, the tunnels remained silent and still, except for the distant dripping of water.

Mr. Graves leaned heavily upon me, not quite dead weight, absolutely determined to see this through. There was some light, though not enough, from lank phosphorescent fungi that curled in crevices in the stone. The walls were still slimy and sticky. I noticed objects trapped against the wall, held by the disgusting substance. There was nothing of importance: scraps of paper, driftwood, shells, and smallish bones—all detritus to be expected in a place such as this.

The tunnel stretched off in both directions. We turned to the right, for lack of any good signal as to which might be the correct path. Our progress was slow, but steady, and at last we came to a great door set into the wall. It had an ordinary, although elaborate, handle in the shape of a fish’s head, and it was unlocked when I pulled on it. The hinges did not creak.

The chamber we entered was large, round, and open, almost an amphitheater, with a sunken center point and a ceiling perhaps forty feet in height. There was another small door set into the wall across from us, and a massive double door to our right. Huge statues, abstract and unsettling, using bones and lacquer and gold in their creation, stood at irregular intervals, their cubic bases out of place in this strangely organic room.

Bas-reliefs in a style almost identical to that found on the tiara which had catalyzed this whole nightmare processed around the walls, inlaid with gems and gilded with the opalescent gold. The eyes of figures glinted and slid in strange ways in the light from my wand, making them seem to leap to life. And they were strange figures: the fishlike beings which we had unfortunately met in Innsmouth already were prominent, but there were others, abstract things that were nothing but masses of spirals and eyes which reminded me uncomfortably of my own sliding shadow.

On the wall to our left, facing the double doors, was the greatest set of figures. In the center, imperial, was a crouching thing, bat-winged with a head like an octopus; to its right and left waited titanic visions of those grotesque fish-folk of Innsmouth. All three were rendered in bizarre ways, almost Cubist in nature, as if the artists struggled to portray something of a separate dimension in simple three-dimensional stone.

“What in Alhazred’s name are we looking at?” Mr. Graves said at last, breaking the silence.

“I think…this is a shrine of Dagon,” I said. We crossed the floor to the base of the three great titans, where words in that bizarre language were sprawled across the stone. The buzz of magic, strange magic, set my teeth on edge. It was as though there was grit in my eyes, grit I could not rub out. It increased as I neared the huge figures, painful and nauseating. I pointed to the words in turn. “Dagon, Cthulhu, Hydra. A Holy Trinity.”

“Bad parody of your church,” Mr. Graves said flatly. “Anything else?”

“The magic’s here,” I said. “This…I don’t know if it’s the source, but…”

I looked up at the uncaring faces of the great old ones, at their alien eyes turned toward the heavens, and shuddered. I followed their gaze. There were stars etched upon the ceiling, an astronomical chart, something vaguely familiar from my lessons in Astrology—but the stars were wrong, set into foreign positions that I did not know.

Mr. Graves took my hand. “Credence. Are you with me?”

“I am,” I said, shaking myself from my contemplation of the great figures.

The piping sound came again, clear on the currents of air that drifted through the cavern.

I looked around uneasily. The sound was, perhaps, closer now. “We should go.”

“Agreed,” Mr. Graves said.

By a silent accord, we did not head toward the double doors, but circled the cavern instead, to the smaller door. This door, however, was locked, and not by a simple padlock or door lock. There was a bar on the other side, which neither of us could easily remove. And we had not taken six steps toward the double doors before we hear the sounds of feet and chanting from beyond.

“Damn,” Mr. Graves snarled. Hobbled as we were, we could not possibly make it back across the amphitheater and out the door in any kind of good time. “Behind that statue!”

We ducked out of sight behind one of the huge statues. Its base afforded a spot out of sight of the doors, with our backs to the wall. The circular nature of the chamber preserved us: at no point could anyone see us, unless they were to round the statue entirely. By that same token, though, we could not see any of the rest of the room and could only crouch, waiting for whatever might come.

The doors opened with a grating groan, and the inarticulate chanting took on clarity. “Iä! Iä! Dagon! Hydra! Iä! Iä!”

Footsteps, many footsteps, processed across the floor, as if the whole of Innsmouth would fill the amphitheater. But there were other sounds, croaking voices that split the syllables of the prayers into incomprehensible fragments, the words as they were meant to be spoken.

There was shuffling then, as all those people arrayed themselves around the room, still repeating that chant. I was reminded absurdly of a Sunday service, of people singing “Seek Ye First” or some other hymn. They had the same sort of tone to their voice, a by-rote thing said frequently enough for it to become habitual.

Light flickered from torches, casting strange shadows around the room. That was the purpose of the abstract statues, I realized: when caught in the light, they created images on the walls, projecting moving images of leaping fish and swirling smoke. It was as if we had fallen into a dreamscape. Old memories rose in my mind, memories of unknown dream-cities, and I could not be certain if they were true or not.

One voice, deep and commanding, began to chant near the front of the room. I recognized it in an instant. “Dagon wgah’n y’bthnk cvulgtlagln llll nglui shagg’cai chtenff’fhtagn!  Hupadgh’shuggnyth cvulgtlagln gnaiih Dagon Hydra’fhalma! Iä! Iä! Dagon! Hydra! Iä! Iä! Fhtagn, Cthulhu, fhtagn!”

The congregation echoed those final words. But the chant went on, joined by the chorus of croaks and howls, and that piping returned again, but louder—louder than before. I hear it now in my mind— _Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!_ —and I shiver. There is nothing outside of the windows, and this house is firmly warded even against the greatest horror.

Still, I have paused more than once while writing to walk around the room, or out into the hall and up and down the stairs, if only to guarantee that nothing is amiss. Each time, I am certain of finding something. Each time, I do not.

I fear the moment that I find what I am looking for.

Mr. Graves and I crouched powerless in the shadow of that statue. It was the only thing, I was sure, between us and certain death. At least one worshipper was standing so closely that their individual voice was audible against the rest. If they took merely a step or two forward or back, we would be revealed.

There was no sermon—perhaps it had already been given, outside the temple itself, and this place was reserved for the ritual act that followed. The chanting continued, a drone, arrhythmic, words barely recognizable, and though I did not know it at all I found myself whispering along.

Shadows danced upon the wall. The piping came again, loud and bright, and with it a strange sound, a thrumming bass hum that fell just at the limit of what is audible, and another sound, thick and oozy like piles of viscera on the floor of a slaughterhouse.

Cultists screamed, the chant shattering like glass. I heard the sounds coming nearer and nearer, as something new entered the room.

A shadow slipped and slid over the walls, undulating and roiling, and I felt a sickening snap of familiarity at the sight. It danced in the way that my shadow danced.

Carefully, I rose up enough that I could see through a gap in the base of the statue behind which we had taken cover. What I saw was nearly enough to drive me utterly to despair. 

No good writer can say simply that the monster confronting the protagonist is a ‘thing that should not be’, and yet I can do nothing else. There was a vast _thing_ occupying the center of the chamber, a nightmare cloud of slimy black, iridescent in the torchlight; a luminous body of tendrils and bubbles that seethed and writhed, pustulent eyes lit from within with green forming and winking out at random in the mass. In it I could sense no magic, only a gaping emptiness that sucked at the world and threatened to pull me in. I stared and stared, unable to wrench my gaze from it. Before it the cultists prostrated themselves, though the fish-folk did not; three of their number had indeed come forward, and appeared to be entreating it in their horrible voices.

Mr. Graves seized me by the jacket and pulled me down. “What are you doing?” he hissed under the cover of the sound.

“We have to get out,” I whispered, feeling wild. Something about the shape of that thing, the terrible form of its disgusting ooze, set darkness dancing in my veins. “I don’t—I don’t know what it is—”

“Is it the thing that enchanted the tiara?” he asked, and to this day I do not understand why he asked the question. But I knew the answer.

“No,” I said. “It’s _worse_.”

He nodded, instantly trusting. “I see a way to the door,” he said softly. “They’re all distracted, and if we move quickly…”

“It has so many eyes,” I whispered, thinking of how much it must perceive.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Mr. Graves said. He took my hand and held it firmly. “If everything else fails—can you Apparate?”

I shook my head.

A look of steely determination came over his face. “If we have to—hold onto me,” he said. “Head for the door and don’t look back.”

We rose to our feet, still out of sight, and began our cautious movement toward the door.

The lights danced and the shadows raged and in the center of it all was that _thing_ , a tower of horror, melting up to the ceiling. The cultists were prostrated, all of Innsmouth bowed before the horror, as their fish-folk allies conversed with the thing. All that could be heard was that piping, that endless piping, piping without end.

No one noticed us as we slunk around the edge of the room, keeping to the shadows. One statue—the next statue—the next—and the great open double door was before us.

By some fantastic luck, the thing in the center of the room had not noticed us, nor had the cultists. But from here I could see the open expanse of hallway beyond, the empty floor that led to nowhere. We would be caught before taking fifteen steps.

Mr. Graves did not stop. “Keep going,” he said, and pulled me forward.

I followed, looking over my shoulder toward the thing, and in that moment our eyes met.

Silence fell.

It knew me.

And then the thing moved, slowly, carefully, pseudopods stretching out, reaching, reaching, and I shouted for Mr. Graves to run.

The thing followed.

We ran down the hall, limping, fettered by exhaustion, but fueled by panic and terror. The _thing_ was moving more quickly behind us. I dared to look over my shoulder—it loomed toward us, all the more horrible because I could see the way its slime oozed over the walls, pulling it along with cilia as long as my arm. Its piping filled my ears. I believe that I was screaming.

At the end of the great hall we suddenly reached the bottom of a flight of great steps which led only up into darkness, not to freedom. Still it was our only way. We had to climb.

But Mr. Graves could not take the stairs; he stumbled on the first one and I caught him by the wrist, pulling him up. He seized my arm and turned in place and—

—we exploded to the top of the stairs. For half a second I saw Mr. Graves’ gray face, the blood staining his shirt, and then he turned in place and we were launched three hundred feet into the dark hall, landing hard on the floor.

He fell the second we landed and did not move again.

I dropped to my knees, hearing the piping coming closer, that awful _Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!_ I felt desperately for his pulse and found it, weak and fluttering. He was barely breathing.

The light of the thing’s eyes appeared over the top of the stairs and in the greenish cast I could see the vague outline of Mr. Graves’ prone body. I staggered up and seized him under the arms, attempting to haul him further away, but I could not make it more than a few feet. We fell together, in the face of the horror.

In a pathetic attempt at defense I placed myself between the thing and Mr. Graves, staring up at it in half-mad terror as it came closer. It filled the whole of the hallway, tendrils reaching out toward us as if it would consume us both.

“No,” I whispered, reaching blindly behind me to seize Mr. Graves’ hand.

For a moment, I met one of the thing’s blinding green eyes. It stared back at me, a cluster of more eyes appearing and popping away. We looked at each other, and I felt the dizzying sense of familiarity, as though I looked into a mirror. My head began to pound and I whimpered, unable to look away.

The great thing did not come nearer.

It only looked, and looked, and my brain seemed to burn and my stomach turned itself inside out, acid vomit dripping from my slack mouth. I was no longer afraid. I could not even think.

And then the thing began to roil away, back down the stairs. It did not turn, for it had no front or back, only departed. I watched it go, uncomprehending.

In the dark I turned and pressed my hands to Mr. Graves’ chest. I could not speak, could not find the words to speak to him. He was only barely breathing. The words for what might have occurred drifted through my fevered brain—overextension, Splinching, worse—and I felt tears running down my face.

But I could not even keep myself upright. I slumped over his body, resting over him as if I could protect him, and knew no more.


	9. Chapter 9

When I awoke, there was light again. It was weak and flickering torchlight, but still, I could see well enough. I was in a cell, smooth-walled with no places to hide, surprisingly high-ceilinged, with a door of iron bars. Mr. Graves lay beside me, utterly insensate, and in the corner huddled someone familiar and surprising.

“Janet?” She looked up at me. On shaky legs, I stood up and crossed the cell to sit beside her. “Why are you here?” I felt as if I were speaking through cotton in my mouth, but persevered. I had surely suffered worse.

Janet folded her arms around her knees. Her voice was dull, and there were tear tracks over her cheeks. “They got me while I was waiting for the bus. Talked about…sacrifice, and all that…they’re going to throw us into the sea, for Dagon.”

I had nothing to say to that. We were caught, easy as fish in a net, and there was nothing we could do. I took her hand and held it, a meager comfort. Mr. Graves awoke not long after I did. He had little enough to say. There was a haunted look in his eyes, one I was sure that I shared. He came and sat on Janet’s other side, moved by the same instinct that had caught me. Although I would have liked to have had the mutual comfort of his arms, poor Janet needed us far more than we needed each other in that moment. We had no wands, and Mr. Graves could not cast even a spell to shed light on us. There was no way for us to get out.

And in the dripping dark we waited.

Eventually a group of Innsmouth folk came to retrieve us. If the ordinary folk looked fishlike, then these people seemed more akin to the monstrous fish-folk of the deep than to a human. Gills opened on their necks, and their eyes had migrated to the sides of their head. They tied our hands, but nothing more, and still we knew we had no chance of escape.

We were marched through halls decorated in the arcane style of the fish-folk, majestic bas-reliefs telling of a history so long and grand that it could dwarf the whole of human history on every continent. I wished, even in that moment, that I might study it at length. But we never stopped.

At the foot of a long staircase, I entreated our captors to at least allow me to help Mr. Graves, who could not possibly manage the stairs alone. They were sympathetic to that, at least, shards of a familiar humanity shining through. With his arm around my shoulders, I helped him at our slow and painful pace up the stairs, hearing the terrible piping somewhere far below us, and the crash and roar of waves above.

And at last we emerged atop Devil’s Reef.

We were wrenched apart, and though Mr. Graves struggled one of the fish-folk clawed him across the side of the face. Our hands were tied again, and my heart pounded with the realization that we truly had no escape. Without wands, without magic, we were as helpless as a No-Maj child in the hands of the people of Innsmouth.

There were priests, hunched and finned, with teeth like things of the abyss, arranged in a pattern upon the top of the reef. Crowds of the ordinary people of Innsmouth stood in rows. The sky was clear, and the cold stars glared down from overhead. Icy wind whipped the waves into a frenzy, white caps glittering in the starlight and the light of flashlights and torches upon the reef. Boats bobbed upon the waves, holding even more people, eerie shadows in the night. The sound of chanting, discordant, arrhythmic, filled the air. The priests, with their tiaras, evoking the sounds of waves breaking upon strange shores; the people of Innsmouth, chanting in a drone that terrible hymn to Dagon.

And out to sea, on the horizon, I thought that I could see the suggestion of a place where something else might be. Something enormous.

“The Deep Ones will welcome you in the great city of Y’ha-nthlei,” a huge man said, approaching the three of us. He gestured to a projection of rock that overlooked the open ocean. He smiled, ecstasy in the expression. “Dagon will welcome you! Be honored!”

And he pointed, first, to Janet.

She screamed as her captors began to push her forward, toward the edge. All her struggles were in vain. She was thin and weak and could not have fought off even one of them.

“No!” Mr. Graves shouted hoarsely, straining forward as if to catch her.

“ _Janet_!” I screamed, a useless waste of breath. I struggled against the clawed hands of my captors, but there was nothing I could do. They were already hauling Janet to the edge, the deformed priests chanting in that awful slippery language, her wails a terrible counterpoint to it all.

At the edge they pushed her. For a moment, she teetered on the edge of the precipice, short hair and dress whipped by the frigid winds.

Her fall was an instant of terrible silence.

And then there was a sound, the sound of a school of fish leaping over each other, waves splashing, teeth snapping, and a piercing scream all too quickly cut short.

Without a pause for mourning, the chanting began again, a slow thrumming that filled the air around us, evocative, seductive, as if we heard waves breaking upon a beautiful shore. And yet before my eyes I could see the sickly lantern-light, and the cold evil eyes of the stars above, and the abominations around us. Even as I delighted, I despaired.

 As the chant processed to its climax, two of the largest of the Innsmouth folk seized hold of me and dragged me forward. I cried out, struggling, but could not break their hold. Their claws bit into my skin and blood dripped down my arms.

“Credence! _Credence_!”

Mr. Graves’ voice behind me provided a strange sort of comfort. I would hear his voice speaking my name one last time. There was nothing I could do, not now. I was not strong enough, nor was he. Some part of me, the fatalistic piece which had accepted so much suffering in my life, was content to die at last. I looked over my shoulder, seeing Mr. Graves, white-faced and bleeding where he had been clawed, and managed a faint smile.

I came to the edge and looked down, just as Janet had done before me. And in the water I saw them. They circled, larger than sharks, with eyes like fish from the abyss and mouths of sharp teeth that barely allowed their mouths to close, covered with waving manes of fins and scales like armor. They were adorned with elaborate and finely-worked jewelry that flashed and flickered in the light. Behind them in the water trailed gorgeously eerie blue phosphorescence.

And down, and down, and down I could see, illuminated by the flashes of blue where they swam, the titanic forms of the oldest of the Deep Ones. There were so many as to make an army. In the water they were none of the limping, ungainly things we had seen in the caves beneath Devil’s Reef or on the streets of Innsmouth, but magnificent creatures free of all constraint. And at the deepest reaches, where sight failed, swam some behemoth, a creature whose vast bulk could only be hinted at, larger than the greatest whales. Dagon, that being which was an object of worship and of fear. I would have said that they were beautiful, but—there, there below me in the water, floated a single object which reminded me of my fate.

The head of Janet Thompson, blind eyes staring into the uncaring sky.

Without warning something shoved me from behind.

I fell.

I never hit the water.

Throughout this whole investigation, I had forgotten that, no matter how suppressed, there was a third intelligence beside Mr. Graves and I in this investigation. We were never once alone, not even in our darkest moments. Indeed, never in all my years had I been truly alone.

My bones shattered, my flesh melted away, and my voice was lost in the shrieking hell of a nightmare cloud of oily black, a luminous body of tendrils and bubbles that seethed and writhed, lit from within by fire and lightning. I hung over the water and heard the cultists of Innsmouth scream behind me, the things in the water thrashing and yawping in alarm. I heard Mr. Graves shouting my name still, and knew that in this form I could save him. I reached out over the reef, intending to catch him in the black mass of the Obscurus and flee with him.

He broke from the hands of his captors and flung himself bodily into my grasp. I held him close, manifesting only enough of a body to embrace him with smoking, bleeding human arms. I turned then and moved to cross over the Reef, blowing back like a storm onto land, intending to drive a path of devastation through Innsmouth as I once had through New York.

But I did not get the chance.

A sound came, a great yawning and shrieking, the sound of a star imploding.

The world shook around us.

Air trembled and I felt a tearing in the fabric of our very reality. The magic in the air warped and screamed and I screamed with it, pulled in all directions by the force. I directed my attention downward and saw a horror I can barely describe.

A mountain rose from the sea bed.

I had been so terribly mistaken. The titan form of that oldest of the Deep Ones I had glimpsed so briefly was not Dagon; the shape of Dagon rendered in stone within the temple was not Dagon. How could they be? Those were things of our reality. They had shape.

This thing was the antithesis of shape.

It rose before us from the water, a mass whose edges shuddered in the periphery, suggesting movement that extended beyond the bounds of the known, a fourth dimension attempting to reconstruct itself in only three, tessellating as it slid between realities. It was a titan as large as a skyscraper, hunched, slavering, gibbering. I can call it a being only because I have no other words to describe it. ‘Being’ would mean that it is a thing which can be comprehended and explained, but this thing cannot. I can approximate that its face is like that of a lobster, full of tenebrous feelers and tendrils beneath a shell of armor, but it is only approximation. I cannot describe the true shape of it, or if it has a shape at all. It is not-shape and to force the human mind to comprehend it is to force it back into a pretense of normality that tears at the mind and the very soul.

So I looked into the face of the Great Old One, Dagon, into those gelatinous eyes that glowed with a venomous golden light, and saw my end. In my arms, Mr. Graves shuddered, words of madness tumbling from his lips.

 

Ĩ͖̹͚̂ͣ̃̀̔ ͚̯̇̏̒ͨ̚ͅK̤̰̱̊̚N̬͖̳̰͆̆̅́̎ͯͮ̿O̙̭̞͍̮̣̹̯͛̒͛̐͛Ẃ̞̜̙̟͎̥͕̈̃̎͗͊̅̆ ͓̼̀̄̽́Y̗̗̮̞͗̑͐̾O͈̲̮̪͈ͦ̌ͯͪ̓̐͂̔ͬÜ̮͓̣ͦ

 

I did not know how, when the voice shook the heavens and the earth, above and below audible speech, but I understood the words.

 

I̞͚͕͛̐̍̀ ͈͍͚̫̬̘̰̥̖̆͂ͭ̐͆ͫK͚̦̻̪͖̬̻̪̯͊ͩN̗̤̝̤̰̜̤ͥ̿̒̑̋ͩͩO͖͍̣̬̯̱̬̘͈͐͌̀͑ͯW͓̩̖̩͍̻̠ͪ̉ͅͅ ̱̣ͮ̃̑ͯẎ̟̼̤͇͉̝͉̯ͯ͑O͚̣ͫ̇ͣU̱͉̗̳͓ͤ͛͊͆ͥ̑ͣͥ̉

I̺͙͓̍̾͂ ̹̦̓̚K̝̺̭͍̑ͯ̉̏Ǹ̗̥͖̱̜̯̹̪̳͋ͭO̞̪ͤ̓̋̾W̠̰̹̫̠̄̀ͫ̂͒̾ ̦̯̤̪̃͌̒ͅY̙͚̜̫ͪ͋O̠̪̻̥̍͛̉U̹̣̭̱̰͙̖̤̲ͫͨͥ,͇̰͓̳̟͓͊ͪ̿̉̃́ͥ̽ͅ ͖̱̘̗̞ͭ͋̓D̺̭͋ͫ̊W̗̻̑̓̊ͣͩ̌̿̅ͅE̥̙̅ͅL̯͓͔̘̺͉͓͛ͨ͋̆ͅL̯ͪ͊E͕̥̜̬̩̗͋ͬͅȐ̰̯͔̳͓̠̦̬̖͌ͭ̃̔͑̚̚ ͔̣̳͉̘̝̿̀̿ͮ̿̇̐̽ͅI͎͙̮̞͈̪̾ͧͮͣ͑ͪ̌͆N̬̞̆̈́͗͋̽̽ͣ͛ ̲͓͇̪͈͖̣͌ͣ̒͑ͤͣͧḒ̦̤͉̹̑̓ͪ̑̏A̰̪̤̮̜̘̫̞̞ͩ̐R̤͙͕̖̱̜̦̜̐̋ͩ̒K͔̲̞̖͙ͪN͍̱̟̝̺̬̿E̯͍̱͉̻̻͎͎̘̒̌͑̈́̀S̺̹̪̺ͪ̈́̎S̞̤̅ͯͯ̅ͯͮ̈

 

The great thing seemed to study me. The reef was collapsing below us and it took no notice. The sky was alight with strange colours, and the Obscurus hummed out of my bones.

 

W͙͖̜͛ͣ̋͊̃ͨ̅H̞͔͍̟̼̳͇͕ͤͧͥA̬̘͎͕̯̮͍̬͆̔͋ͫͪ̿T̯͙̰̫̏̿ͭ̍ͦ͐ ̜̥͋̆B̼̰̥̾̐ͧͅU̹̗͎̇̓S̯̪̝̫̲̭̝ͯ̈́͗I͈̳̼͙̠̯̍ͪN͉̼̮̩̱̄̍̆ͦͨ͐Ȅ͈̠̹̟̹ͯ̒ͩͦ̈S͍͔͈̞̬̣̮̤̠̿Ŝ̝̟̐ ̘͍̬̜͈ͨ̎̃ͭͅD̠̘͎̰̭̬̈̌ͮͣ͆̑O̼̟̐̂ͭ ̭̻̖̱͎̑ͭṮ͉͖̿̍̒͐ͪ̑H̪̪̙͉̺̖̤̅E̖̻̞͖̅ͦͅ ̣͔̲̉ͪ̆͌̓Ö̮̠͓́̃̿Ủ̻̮̭̲̥͗T̲̣͙̭̾͆ͩE̮̫̞̜̳̎ͩͥ͑̎R̬̫̱̦̞̯̓͌̎͗̔ͅͅ ͚̭͈̬̬͇̄̆ͯͤͅG̜̮̺̼̹̜̓ͫO̙̞͗ͯḊ͚̝̤͍͔͇̞̈ͫ̇ͬ͛ͣ̊S͇̻̯͖̈́̾̏͐ ̣̅ͤ̄͌̾ͥ̄̇S̼̺̖͕̟̫̓Ẻ̯N͇̻͛ͫͣ̇̈́̓̑D̰͈̺̱͕̠͙̈ͯͅ ̫̠̜ͭ̄̍ͣ̃̂Y̺̹͈̒͆ͮ͆́ͯ͒̋Ȍ͍͈̫͇̗͎͚̼͛͒͒̀͆ͭ̚U̩̜͐͛ͯ̅͂̀͂ ͙̟̰̠̒ͮ̅U̟̞͉̤̰͓̪͙̒ͮ͋̄ͯP̲̣̱̘͍̯̳̠̊ͤ̍́̑ͮͥ̌O͙̭̖̓N̯̗̙̣̼̾͌̓̉̍ͣ̓,̝̪̝̄̽̓͛ͧ ͓̘̘͍̥̘̝͗ͅM̺̜̩͔̑̓̿̈̋E͓̖͔̖͓̥̬̓S͚̝̹̣͍͙̑͛S͖̟̽̑̈ͯḘ̘̄̀͊̄̎NG͙͔̝̱̖̒ͮͯͣE͚͙̰̲ͯ̌͆̄ͮͯR̲̣̱͖͔̫̯̜ͪ̎̑ͮ̃̀͑ͦ?̝͓̙̬̋̏ͭͧ̋ͤ͆̉ͅ

_“I’m no messenger,”_ I said through dry lips. Black blood oozed from a split in my skin and trickled down my chin, dripping onto my skin.

 

Y̤̗̭̺͓͍̫̰͒̃̓̇ͬO̳̦̹͕̤̪̮̘̔̇́̚Ú̹̱͎̲͌͐̔̽̒̃͌ ̠͈͍̘͕͚̎́̿͌͂̒A̝̣̯͈͓̘̣͖͆R̟̞͈̮̙̿ͬ̂͒̍ͤ͗Ḙͪ̈́̓ͧ̀̃̐ ̣̩̱̜̲͖̻̄̃B̞͕̗̮̭̘̫̫ͯ̃̇̂̀̋̚L̬̤̖͓̦̜͒̑ͪͅͅI͈̹̬̘͙͔̟ͪͦ͌ͧ͊̐̀́N̤̭͇̩͊̆ͩ̍ͦͥͤ̍D͖̣̜̖͐ͫͥ̅ͮ

 

My eyes were wide with terror. Mr. Graves’s fingers were so tight on the fabric of my jacket that it was tearing. The Obscurus surged around us, undisturbed and unafraid. _“Blind?”_

 

Y̬͍͖̺̖̣̤͂O̼͚̺͍͚̬ͫͥ̏ͩǗ͓̪͖ ̙̱̰̪̤̆͂͐̐̾̈̄ͧḀ̬̩͒ͦ͛̉Ȓ̖͚̺ͯ̑E̯̪̪̣̪ͨͧ̅̑ ̹̝̱̟̮͓̞ͧ̐ͩͫ͒ͥ̐̐̇Ỏ̰̘̟̜͑͒̈̈ͅN͖̠̯̪̲̓̊̅̎͂̽E̘̳̙͈̹̭̫̎̏ͣ̌ ̘͎̹̇̎O̯̜ͥ̃ͯ̍̌̿͑F̠̝̗ͧ̆̐̐̋̔ ̥͎̘͎̪̦̩͎̳̿̏̈́̄̉́ͭͣÅ̗̞̩̇̎ ̼͔̠̉ͧT̞͇̞̱̩ͫH̲͔͓̝͎̫̯̖̻̉̇͗̅̐ͥͯ̂͐O̳̝͌ͧͮ̐̓Ũ̺͖̪͇̘̪̜ͣ̇͋́͌S͚͇̭̩̟̿̃A̳͙̥̖̖̥̝̟͂̊̓ͧͩ͌N͔̙̏̽ͩ͊̏ͫ̈́̎̋D̞̻̻͔̟̳ͪ̔͗ͩͦ ͖͈̟̙̫͎͊̑F̫̭̳ͤ̔O͎͙͉̒̐ͬ̒̅ͬ̆ͧ̚R͍͍ͦ̔͂ͭ̍M̩̱̼̗ͤ͐͊̇̈͒̉S͖͖͚͙̳̟̣̏ͩ

A̲̪̖̓͆ͭ͋̇̓ͅN͉͈̖̫̞̄ͯ̚D̫͎̑̚ ̬͓͂͛͗̒ͪͮ̚Y̟̣̠͕̜͓͕ͣ͑̈́̂̄O̲̝̥̟̽ͬ͆ͥ̾ͭ̿̚Ȗ̱̲̳̟̮̫̤̞̄̎ͩ͐ͭͩ̾ ̣̩̘͔̙̬̐ͮ̈́̅̀A̖̬͙̐Ṟ͖̗̹̲̜̌̇ͣ͌ͨ̍E͓̣̋̃̂̔̐ͅ ̫̖ͨ̃͐U̘̺ͭ̆̄̽̒͐ͦN̞̯͍̹̝̱̹̝̾̑̆A̟͔̩̓ͮ̒̊͑̽̚̚Ŵ͍̼̤̫͖̓̅̋̒͛̍ͧ̚A̩͔̺̮̾ͬ̽ͬ͗̽̍ͅR̬͕̙͕ͨ͑͗ͤĔ̟͎͇̫͍͚̳̥

S̪͔̗ͦ͆ͣͦ͗ͅT̥̝̞̠̗̙̘̭̃ͥ̔̅R̠̹̙̾ͭ̓̇ͪ̎̌̉A͇̜͇̬͉̥̪ͫͩ̍̍Ṅ͓͈̣̯̦̖̜̀ͅͅG̦̝͕͓̹̋͌ͮͭͤ̆E͚ͫ̋ͣ͗̍͂̊

 

It laughed.

The stars _screamed._

 

W̻̗͙͇͎̲͚ͬͤ̍Ḥ̬̰̌E͍͔̪͉̰̎̓̎̓ͣN̟̹̭͔̙͍͂ͯͯ̎ͪ͂ ͉̖̞͕̯̘̃T̺̙̘̘̯͋̅̔͌ͩ͐ͤH̦ͧ̊̅ͩ͐ͦ͗̐E̯͎͇͙̞̬͕̾ͭ̿͐ͣ ̝̫̲̯͖̋̄̐ͨͤ̒D̠̬̜͕͚̯̠ͯͥͯͪ̀ͧͨ̀Â̳̫͑̾E̜͇̍͂͑͐ͅM̯̬̙̘̮ͮ͊̈ͬ̐Ọ͎͎̈ͤN̩̬͔̟̺͉͎̒̓ͬ̈͋̃̎ ̰͉̮̪̥̱̼̜̈́ͮ̔ͬS̝͉͍̹̳͚͍̻̜̆ͫ͑ͭͭ͆ͦͥ̆Ú͍̗ͩ͒̒̃̾̔̚̚L̼̞̤̹͒ͭ̽ͥ͋͂ͫ̚T̙̳̦͈͖̰̉̔̔̋ͮ̍͒̍A̰͖̗̥̥͍ͦ̎̄̋N͍̺̻̳̟ͯͤͧ ̪͓̤͎̹̠̫̫ͩ͂ͦ̏C͓̪̦̎̑͌ͧ̇͑̐Ā͉̤ͦ͌ͭͤ̌͂̈L̺̼̙͔̱̰͕̏͌L̬̼̤̱͆́̈̾ͅS̞͕̪̘̈́̇ͤ̆ͭ̅̽ͥ̚ ̜͇̝̪ͬ̆ͦ̅ͪ̇Y̦͕̬̖̙̖̝ͤͪͪO͎̩̝͙̙͍ͣ͗U͔̦̹̔͊͌̈́̂͂

B̭̼͙̪͙͈̱ͯ͗ͅA̺̙̥̒̓̊C̜̝ͩ̽̋̋ͭ̂K̞͕̞͓͔̳̥̩ͭ̃͌̾͊ͪ ̼̻́̇͛̄̏̋̇̂T̘̘̃ͬ͗Ọ͍̼̞̰ͨͦ ̦̾Ṱ̞͉̩͓̒̿̎̌͗͆ͅH̥̤͎̝̖͆͐̒ͥ̆̏̌̆̓E̜̯͙̱̦ͧ͐̔ͤ́̆̆ͅ ̤̮͎̞̇V̫̟͙̇͐̏Õ̗̺̚Í̮̪̟̬̬̪͆D̠̠͕̗͉̺̈ͯ ̠̙̗̼̹̈́̀̇ͤ̃ͧ̊̈́ͨO̫̩ͫ̂͌̐̌͂͑ͧ̚F͎̪͆̿̎ ̺̼̝͉̅̀̈́C̪̗̹̮̰̥̼̍ͫH̙̤̞̠ͯͦ̈́̃ͣ͗̆ͯÂ͉ͫ͗ͫ̚O̖̦̣̲̭̟ͭͮͦ͌S̜̤̯͍̞̬̊ͩ͐̀̋͂̂͊ͪ

Ř̝̖̭̎E̯͕̟̗͖̦̘̝͛̔͂̓̂̽͂ͅT̠̘̳̾͑͛̎̇̈U̬̥͖ͩ̍̇́͐ͯR̼̜̞̈̅N̞̹̻̖̘͐͐̏̐̈́͑ ̥̩͖̰̤ͩͭ̔̒̚T͕͈͇̻͓͕͖̿͋͒Ỏ͖̥͔͈͎͕̫̮͍̑̚ ̜̠̬̣̠̙̿͂ͪͩͦ̎ͤ́Ṁ͕̘̥̥̏͒ͥ̉̓ͦE͖͎̗͉̾͋ͬ́,̻̻̦ͩ̔ͥ̊ͫ̚ ̩̞͈̬͕̖̇̓͑̅̇Ḋ̼̼̹̙̙̋W̲̙̬̔ͮ̏̌E̠̻ͬ̆̈́̊̑͗͋͆L̺͇̹̮̫͍͔͆͐͗̐L̰̹̝ͥͭĚ͉̘̖͎̱̮̜̗͂̐ͤR͔̫̮͇͍ͯ̉ͯ͛̎̌͐ ͖͖̯̫̝͔̎̄͛I̯̙̬͖̲̿̓̋́ͨ͌N͙̹̝̺̟̼ͮ͂̔̐ ̳͚ͮ̌̑D̮̗͕̟̟ͯ̇̄ͮ̿̑A͚̝͎͕ͥR͓ͫ͌͐ͣͬͧK̮̤̪̯̮̹͕̒̈́̓̿ͪͣŇ̤̬̝̹̘͙̓͑̉̑̄Ẽ̦͙̣̪͊Ș͎̬͓̦͙̋̀̈ͧS̩̖̜̲̼̋͌̃

R̫̲̩͓̦̹ͬ̊̂͐ͣ̿ͫ̾̚E̬͛͌ͮT̯̳̪̗̳̖̊͐̒̽̾͑ͭ̍ͩͅU̱̍ͩ̒R̤̭̬͉̠̮̦̲ͧ͒͋́̃ͤ̓̚N͔͙̤͖̙͕͙̬ͫ̈́͛̓ͭ ̥̬̾̐̎̓̚A̟̣̮̋̃̉ͪͅN͚̭̩̞̼̹̞ͮͫ̄̈̐̅D͙̫̞̦̫͐̋̔̃̽ͤ̐ ̜͇͙͎̗̣̘̻̈́ͣͫ̀ͣ̐ͦI̺̲̣̝̼̣͗̂̾̽̎̑ͅ ̹̟̲͍̘̟͋̍̑̇ͪ̍̑̓W͔̻̬̦̠̳̪ͪ̽I̪͕̗̘̣̣̪̤͗̽L̬̣̯͓͇͙̳̲͙̐̈̃̂ͥ̀͊ͭL͎̲̣͍͛ͦͪ̒ͦ̋ͣ ̯̜̞͉̥̫̩̓͊͂̊ͪ̎̌̚S͇̰̱̑͋͂E̮̦̱̋͂͂ͣ͊́ͯ̍Ṱ̝ͪ͗ͯ ̦̫͉̖̮̦̲̖̄͆̏̿ͅY͇̬͇̝͍͖͖ͪͤͬ͆̚O̠͚͎͛̈͒ͪ͒̽͗U̳̱͙̟͍ͥ̆̈ͩ̓ͯ͊ ̼̦̣̣̻̭̋F̞̻̳͚̖̩̬͂ͥR͚̘̣̱͓̯͙̅̄̃E̫̻̝̥̪͉̰͗̀̏͆̿̑E̻̩͐

 

It reached out, then, with a squamous appendage, and brushed against my forehead.

And I _saw_.

I _knew_.

For a brief moment I saw beyond our familiar skies into the vast gulfs beyond, where mindless gods danced to the tuneless piping of a flute before the throne of an ancient thing beyond all human comprehension. I saw the place where the deadlights writhed and the shadows screamed with twisted sentience, where mouths gaped and eyes rolled and the machinery of the universe thudded on toward its inevitable conclusion.

They say that horror lies in the unknown, that we fear that which we cannot see. I understand a deeper truth: that we fear most that which we can see. We do not fear what lurks in the dark when we cannot see it, but the thing that remains before us once the lights are turned on. The former can be explained and forgotten. The latter stares into our eyes and forces us to know it.

I knew.

I will never forget.

 

Y̰̙̪Ö͎̙̱ͪ̏ͥU̜̣͙̩̪ͭ͆ ̹̘̞͒͗͒̀̈́̇͊Š͓͉͔͓̓̓̆Ẹ͔̹ͦ͌E̫͇̪̘̩

O DͬͭW̗̪͎̩̗̎Ȇ̬̳̙̝́̔ͩL̲̈́̽̊̏̉L͇̦̻̦̼͓̩ͦE͓͍̬ͪ͊ͪ̄̆R̰͙̖̞̫̹ͩͤͣ̂͊ ̼̫̝͙̯̩͍̔I͈̥͎ͣ̉̀N̜͙͖̟̟͍̉ ͔ͯ̑͑D͖̥̰̙̭̜͚ͥ̀Ǎ͇̙̔̆̽̚R̩͚͚̀ͧ̿̑̔K̯̱̰̪͑ͥ̾̚N̘͋ͪ̃ͮͬE̯S̜͚͈ͭS̳̳̖

I̪̞̗̪̤̋ͣͩ͋ͣͣ ̩͒ͪ̆W̱̻̼̳̱͍͓͗͗̽́̉̚I̩̟̦̤͍̺̘L̤ͪ͊̉L͕̠̦͛̐̊ ̱͍̫̳̰B͔̫ͫ́̉̚ͅE̬͚̯̠̞͎ͮ̍͆ͮ ̤̱͒̓̓̄ͮ̔̚W̟͎̰̖̤̎̅̿̽͌̏͊A̠͇͇͈̖͌̂ͪI̱̲͚͙͓̝͂̏T̞̦͔̝̟͎̉́͗ͅI̪͕̯̯̲̦ͨ͊ͫ̒̇͗ͩN͇̜̼G̬̬̠ͬ̓̔͌̚

 

And Dagon sank.

The Great Old One vanished beneath the waves without a trace, as if it had never been.

My next recollection is only in fragments. I remember water, icy cold; I remember staggering onto the dark sand under the malevolent stars, clinging to Mr. Graves as if we were both drowning; I remember collapsing beside him, insensate on the sand.

I remember nothing more.


	10. Chapter 10

I must pass over what occurred next only in summary, because I was not directly involved in any of it. Mr. Graves, after he managed to rouse himself, found the strength to summon a wandless Patronus, which brought aid from MACUSA. Aurors descended upon the town and carried us both to safety, far away from Innsmouth.

We spent more than a week in the hospital, both of us. For the first days I am told that we both raved and screamed and wept, refusing all light, preferring the safe darkness in which we did not have to see what surrounded us. Gradually, however, we recovered our senses. Physically, we were both severely taxed. Beyond our complete exhaustion, we were injured. My arms had been clawed and I had ripped myself half to shreds in that Obscurus-assisted attempt at escape. Mr. Graves had been clawed across the face, had Splinched himself during our Apparition up the grand staircase beneath Devil’s Reef, and had worsened the injury to his leg in our flight out of Innsmouth.

Both of us were interrogated as to the truth of what had happened. I answered honestly, start to finish, from our departure from the train station all the way through to those moments upon the reef. Still, some instinct kept me from speaking the awful words that Dagon had given me, the terrible promise it had made.

I recovered well before Mr. Graves. When I was deemed fit to walk again, and Aurors had guaranteed that I would not destroy the city with my first step, I went immediately to visit him. I had no concern for myself, only for him. I remembered him on that reef, in my arms, madness surging around us, and I was afraid for him even now.

He looked weary beyond bearing, when I arrived, but upon seeing me he smiled. “Credence,” he said. “It’s good to see you walking.”

“They only just let me go,” I said softly, sitting down at his bedside. “How are you, Mr. Graves?”

“Percival,” he said. “Just…Percival. Nothing else.”

I nodded, biting my lip. “Are you…”

“They’ve removed me from the Directorship,” Percival said. At my sound of dismay he shook his head. “I couldn’t have done that job anymore. Not after…”

The unspoken words were clear. I took his cold and trembling hand in mine. For a while we simply sat in silence, remembering the things we had seen.

At last he roused himself. “Where will you go from here?”

“I could return to work,” I said, “but…I don’t want to.” I thought of the girl at the next desk, of her kind smile and her fiancé. I imagined her with Janet Thompson’s face, and shuddered.

“I can’t blame you,” Percival said. He looked at me and smiled again, soft and faint. “I’ve got more than enough space, if you’d like to stay with me.”

Despite it all, my heart leaped in my chest. “You mean that?”

“I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t,” he said. “Still, I know…it was ill-advised, to kiss you. And I won’t blame you if you think me an old man with no business looking twice at someone your age…”

“I’d been waiting for that a long time,” I confessed. “I…thought of you often. I only lacked the courage to do anything about it.”

He squeezed my hand with what little strength he seemed to have. “So we’ll give it a try,” he said.

I smiled at him. “A long try, I hope.”

“As long as we can,” Percival said.

Then I kissed him, and for a while we forgot about the world and all the things beyond. When we left the hospital, we went home together, hand in hand, to share whatever future we made. And Percival and I were, at long, long last, happy.

That is the end of that tale.

But I cannot lay down my pen yet.

I write this as a warning. There are secrets in the deep abysses of the sea and stars and in the dark corners of the earth which must not be disturbed. Blasphemies sleep beyond the reach of human hands, and in this tale I have barely scratched the surface of that which I now know to be true. I know that Gellert Grindelwald seeks power, and that he dares to seek places that no man must go, where madness lies in wait. And MACUSA follows where he leads out of warlike necessity. And horrors, worse than those of Innsmouth, await.

I will claim forever that the horror of Innsmouth is not in the Deep Ones themselves, for they are as great as men may ever be. Their city of Y’ha-nthlei, their other great metropolises sunk beneath the waves, the architectural monuments and artistic triumphs—these are not the horror of Innsmouth. What right does a witch living under the Statute of Secrecy have to criticize a secret civilization? For surely we are as horrific to a No-Maj as a Deep One is to a witch.

No, the horror of Innsmouth is twofold. First is the horror of its people, a horror which I have already described. Janet Thompson, like many others before her, was slaughtered in senseless sacrifice to a deity who cares nothing for her pitiful life. Then why did these xenophobic, frightened little people kill others? What reason did they have for the atrocities they committed, for their hate and cruelty?

The answer is simple: fish! They wanted to fish, to be able to keep wealth to turn up their noses at their neighbors, to see themselves as superior. It is almost infuriating, to know that these people had the whole gigantic eldritch power of the Deep Ones, of the Great Old Ones, on their side and still sought only for the meanest and most pitiful of goals. It was selfishness on a scale so grand that I can even now hardly comprehend it, and yet it was so. If they had welcomed industry and change with open arms long ago, then they might have joined the world with human eyes. Instead they had kept their pride and their solitude, and so doomed themselves to their demise.

And the other horror is a thing that haunts me every night. I do not speak of it much; there seems little point. But I cannot speak in circles forever, and I have sworn myself to honesty.

Since our time in Innsmouth, Percival and I have studied long and hard. We acquired a copy of Peverell’s infamous grimoire, and searched for the answers as to what powers the “Deathly Hallows” might have, in conjunction with certain vile rituals and eldritch sciences. I have delved into the No-Maj sciences, following the trail of conclusions whose start lies in Friedman’s 1924 paper, “Über die Möglichkeit einer Welt mit konstanter negativer Krümmung des Raumes”, the initial description of the universe as non-static and negatively curved. We have read, of course, passages from the _Necronomicon_ ; we have explored the possibilities of the Pnakotic Fragments. Some texts withheld from No-Maj eyes, such as the _Phrenisium_ of Circe, have been open to us.

All of this study, combined with that vision granted to me by Dagon, has led us to one inescapable and terrible conclusion.

Witches have, for all our history, been so arrogant as to never ask from where our power comes.

The Sumerians claimed that in their beginnings the great god Asarluḫi was given power over incantations, over magic. Asarluḫi is the Son of the Abzu, that primeval sea below earth and the void. In that sea drift the gods, Enki and Damgalnuna and Nammu, creatures beyond human comprehension. The power that Asarluḫi possessed came directly from this primal wellspring. If this myth is to be believed, then some men must have been chosen, granted the power to reshape the world at the flick of a finger or the touch of a wand.

It is in the texts of the Sumerians, too, that we encounter names that ring with discomforting familiarity. There is ti-lu ma-tim, the lord of Zarad, Dagon, the lord of fish and of war, of field and orchard and the sea. There too, are references to deeper things, the deities of the underworld and the void, and the great Cthulhu is among their number.

Percival and I are not the first to have made these connexions. Anaxilaus the Greek was banished from Rome for practicing strange magics, and even a superficial reading of the philosopher’s writings indicates that he was attempting contact with great and evil powers. Certain writings of the venerated Yellow Emperor of China hint at terrible mysteries that lie just out of the comprehension of man. The Codex Sahagún, brought back from the Americas by the Spanish conquerors of the Aztecs and now held by the Roman Cabal under a hundred spells of warding, depicts clearly the faces of monstrous gods, unknown in any other manuscript, enemies even of the Aztec conception of a universe cycling endlessly between order and chaos.

In these and other writings, a single theme emerges: _the powers that witches possess are mimicked or replicated nowhere else on earth_.

We are stranger things than human.

And now I must confess the darkest truth of all: the reflection in the mirror is no longer my own.

What the mirror shows is an attractive boy of twenty-four years of age, too serious and solemn for his years, dark eyes looking back steadily. His skin has a healthy color, and he carries himself with no small degree of confidence. He wears a crisp black suit and a sunset-red waistcoat, with a ribbon of the same color tying back his long wavy hair. This is the face that the mirror reflects, that the world sees, that even I see on most of my days.

To eyes that can see, there is another face.

My reflection smears over, like a smear of paint on a canvas, a vague cover for a more terrible and beautiful face, lean and proud and regal, a tempting and knowing face. And this seductive face is the mask of another, an eldritch and titan form with black wings and a burning three-lobed eye…and that face, too, is a mask for a thousand more.

I look at my reflection in the mirror and I know that what I see is no longer true. And Percival knows it, too. Someday, when we are both tired and when we have exhausted our lives, we will go down to the shore together. I will call up Dagon, the Great Old One in the deep, and beg it to fulfill its promise, a compact sealed by the blood of my lover.

The _Necronomicon_ tells us “that is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die”. And so it will be. Percival Graves will become a part of me. I will bear him through the door that Dagon will open, into the place where stars sleep and unfathomable creatures drift in the darkness, where the shattered ruins of long-dead civilizations stand on silent planets and dreams take new life from the black stuff of the void.

We will be joined in the dark abysses of eternity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And...that's a wrap! 
> 
> Thank you all so much for sticking with me this month. This was my first time writing a real horror fic and it makes me SO HAPPY that I was able to keep you on the edge of your seats. I think this maybe would have made Lovecraft proud. (Except for my pro-immigration stance and how _gay_ this fic is. Those, I'm sure, have him rightfully turning in his damn grave.)
> 
> EDIT: for those of you reading this at a later point, it's probably worth pointing you in the direction of something that will help explain Credence a little bit better. [The short story "Nyarlathotep" by HP Lovecraft will give you a sense of what's happening here](http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/n.aspx).
> 
> With these last words, we say farewell to that spookiest of months. I have one FB fic waiting to go up throughout November, but otherwise...this is also the moment to say farewell to _me_. NaNoWriMo, the Fandom Loves Puerto Rice auction, and, oh yeah, COLLEGE are about to consume me. 
> 
> So I'll see you all in December--I'm sure there will be MORE than enough fic to go around!!! <3<3<3


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